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LIFE OF 
GENERAL JOFFRE 



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Photo Henri Manuel 

GENERAL JOFFRE 



LIFE OF 

GENERAL JOFFRE 

COOPER'S SON WHO BECAME 

COMMANDER-IN-CHIEF 

BY 
ALEXANDER KAHN, B.A. 



WITH PORTRAIT 



NEW YORK 

FREDERICK A. STOKES COMPANY 

PUBLISHERS 



MAr 






PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN 



The Author begs to acknowledge his 
indebtedness to M. Felix Magnet, to 
whose kindness he owes much ; to the 
articles of M. Alphonse Seche and 
M. Miles ; and to Mr. D. M. Suther- 
land, Editor of the London Evening 
Standard^ at whose suggestion he 
wrote this little book, and who has 
kindly read the proofs. 



CONTENTS 

GHAP. PAGE 

GENERAL JOFFRE'S BIRTH CERTI- 
FICATE ix 
I. THE SON OF A COOPER i 
II. LIFE AT THE POLYTECHNIC 9 

III. ENTERS THE ARMY 13 

IV. LIFE AS A SOLDIER 17 
V. THE STARTING-POINT 24 

VI. HIS WORK IN THE EAST 29 

VII. HIS ONE ROMANCE 36 

VIII. THE CAPTURE OF TIMBUKTU 42 

IX, THE SUBJUGATION OF THE SOUDAN 50 

X. " A PAIR OF SPECTACLES " 57 

XI. HIS WORK IN MADAGASCAR 61 

XII, JOFFRE— THE MAN 70 

XIII. TIDAL WAVE OF PROMOTION 77 

XIV. COMMANDER-IN-CHIEF 83 
XV. PREPARING FOR WAR 91 

XVI. " JOFFRE, THE TACITURN " 96 

XVII. AT JOFFRE'S HEADQUARTERS 100 

XVIII. SOME ANECDOTES 106 

GENERAL JOFFRE'S FAMOUS ORDER m 
SPEECH OF PRESIDENT POINCARE WHEN 
PRESENTING GENERAL JOFFRE WITH 

THE MILITARY MEDAL 112 
vii 



GENERAL JOFFRE'S BIRTH 
CERTIFICATE 

In the year 1852, on the Fourteenth of 
January^ at ten o'clock in the mornings there 
appeared before us, LAMOUROUX Louis, 
mayor and civil officer of the Commune of 
RivesalteSy district of Perpignan, department 
of Pyrenees-Orientates, Gilles fOFFRE, cooper, 
29 years of age, domiciled at Rivesaltes, who 
reported the birth of a child of masculine sex, 
born on the 12th inst., at 8 o'clock in the morn- 
ing, in his house located in the town, of whom 
the parents are he, Gilles fOFFRE, and 
Catherine PL AS, his wife, no profession, 
29 years of age, of Rivesaltes, and that he 
intended to name the aforesaid child facques- 
Joseph-Cesaire. This declaration was made in 
the presence of Etienne BERDAGNE, wine- 
grower, 50 years of age, and of fean-Pierre- 
Raymond RAZOUS, former clerk of a notary, 
25 years of age, both residents of Rivesaltes, 
and the legal witnesses who signed this docu- 
ment together with us and the father after 
having read it. 

GILLES JOFFRE, PIERRE RAZOUS. 
E. BERDAGNE. L. LAMOUROUX. 



LIFE OF GENERAL JOFFRE 

CHAPTER I 
THE SON OF A COOPER 

ONLY three generations of J off res can 
be traced on the registry books of 
France. 
It was on June i8, 1779, that the first 
Joffre was entered among the births of the 
year in the sleepy town of Rivesaltes in the 
Pyrenean mountains. He was given the 
name of Gilles, and as far as his fragmentary 
history can be traced he was the son of a 
Spanish refugee who fled his own country 
for poHtical reasons. This refugee's name is 
beUeved to have been Gouffre, which he 
transformed into the French form of Joffre. 

Gouffre or Joffre was not a prosperous 
man, but his industry was known throughout 
the adjacent country, where the general 
opinion reigned that he was far too honest 
to be a successful merchant. When he died 
it was his son, also named Gilles, and born 

I A 



2 LIFE^OF GENERAL JOFFRE 

on December 19, 1822, who succeeded him 
in the humble establishment at Rivesaltes. 
Like his father, he apparently had a very 
hard struggle for existence, and, though the 
family never knew real want it never reached 
any measure of comfort or prosperity. 

Gilles Joffre, the second, was the father of 
several daughters, and at one time it seemed 
that the direct family Hne of the Spanish 
refugee was to come to an end, when at the 
age of forty-three there was born to him a 
son, who was destined to be the father of 
the man whom future history will call the 
Saviour of France. 

Soon after the birth of the boy, Gilles 
Joffre's wife died, and the child grew neg- 
lected and uncared for ; but so sound was 
the kernel of honesty and industry he in- 
herited from his grandfather that, instead of 
joining one of the numerous bands of free- 
booters and adventurers that infested the 
Pyrenees at that time, no sooner did he grow 
old enough to learn a trade, than he appHed 
for work to a cooper, and local winegrowers 
still have a saying about '' a barrel as good 
as Gilles Joffre used to make.'' 

The dreams of riches through commerce 
seemed to have become extinct in the Joffre 
family with the advent of this cooper. Gilles 



THE SON OF A COOPER 3 

J off re was content to remain a simple labourer 
until his marriage, on the date of which, 
together with the small dowry brought to 
him by his wife, he came into possession 
of the tiny inheritance left to him by his 
mother. 

With this money he started out as a 
proprietor of a shop of his own, and in the 
home he built for himself and his wife in 
the narrow tortuous street that used to be 
called the '' Rue des Religieuses," there was 
born on January 12, 1852, his first child, 
who was named Joseph-Jacques-Cesaire 
Joffre, and who grew to be the present 
Gdneralissime of the French Army. 

The humble home in the Rue des Religieuses 
by the side of the shop, came to harbour 
in the course of time eleven children of which 
but three — two brothers and a sister, Madame 
Artus, the widow of a captain of artillery — 
remain alive to-day. 

The town of Rivesaltes stands on the 
banks of the river Agly about nine miles 
from the city of Perpignan. It is a town of 
bleak and forbidding aspect with about 
6000 inhabitants. The Joffre home, now 
II, Rue de Grangers, is hke its neighbours, 
humble, plain, and inartistic, and its interior 
construction is quite primitive compared 



4 LIFE OF GENERAL JOFFRE 

with the modern dwelling of an average 
workman. 

As late as 1885 Gilles Joffre continued to 
live in the Rue des Religieuses dwelling, and 
then he was induced to change his domicile 
for a more pretentious home on one of the 
Boulevards of Rivesaltes. 

The childhood of General Joffre differed 
but Uttle from the childhood of thousands 
of other boys and girls who went to school 
and played in the streets of Rivesaltes with 
him. 

He was a good scholar, but not brilhant ; 
neither was he industrious to a degree to 
justify the saying that — '' Industry and 
tenacity of purpose are the essential qualities 
of true genius.'* But he was silent ! 

'' My mother used to say that she re- 
membered the General's mother saying that 
when a baby in the cradle the General never 
cried/* declare several old residents of Rive- 
saltes ; but if this statement may be taken 
as an exaggeration, the fact remains that 
the schoolmates of General Joffre remember 
better than anything else his unwilUngness 
to talk, his peculiar gift of silence that later 
years has come to be known as '* Joffre's 
taciturnity." 

It is in vain to seek for anecdotes of 



THE SON OF A COOPER 5 

General Joffre's childhood. It seems that 
the boy lacked the abiUty to make himself 
popular with other boys. For that matter, 
he was an obstinate child and preferred even 
then lonely rambles to play with his school- 
mates. Thus it comes that, despite the 
pride at having the right to claim the honour 
of having been at school with General Joffre, 
the older citizens of Rivesaltes rack their 
memory in vain to recall a single incident 
that could serve as a prediction of their class- 
mate's future greatness. 

It was only when he was placed in the 
college of Perpignan that his nature' suddenly 
changed, and he became one of the most 
studious pupils, a circumstance that did not 
serve to increase his popularity. It is said 
that he used to erect a wall of books between 
himself and his neighbours so as not to be 
interrupted in his studies. However that 
may be, his name appears among the prize- 
winners of the school as having particularly 
excelled in mathematics, descriptive geometry, 
and drawing. 

A miHtary career for one of its members 
was the treasured dream of every French 
bourgeois household during the Second Em- 
pire. As in the days before the great revolu- 
tion, no noble family but counted one or 



6 LIFE OF GENERAL JOFFRE 

more of its members among the clergy, so 
in the days of Napoleon III, the middle class 
home yearned after a military distinction for 
its sons. 

France needed men for her army, and the 
army became a great democratic institution 
since the nobihty had been decimated and 
exiled during the Revolutionary period. 

Gilles Joffre succeeded in business better 
than his father or grandfather, and after years 
of tireless work achieved comparative pros- 
perity. While not a pillar of the community 
nor a leader of society, he enjoyed the respect 
of his fellow citizens, and it was quite natural 
that he should have begun to aspire for 
another future for his eldest son, than that 
of the head of the barrel-making and wine 
deahng estabUshment. 

The boy's future career was decided at a 
family council, in which, according to local 
report, took part all the boon companions of 
Gilles Joffre. It was there arranged to send 
the boy to Paris to prepare for the Polytechnic. 

Joseph Joffre left his parental home at the 
age of fifteen and a half. When he again 
returned to Rivesaltes, he had already taken 
part and distinguished himself in the war 
of 1870. 

It was Gilles Joffre himself who brought his 



THE SON OF A COOPER 7 

boy to Paris in 1867, at the time when the 
eapital of France was by far the gayest ©ity 
on the Continent. 

They are a silent race these Catalonians. 
The advice of the father was contained in a 
long and earnest look ; the promise of the 
boy was in the form of a firm handshake. 
The boy was left in a private school, long 
since disappeared, and for two years he 
studied and worked, hardly allowing himself 
a hoUday, a sombre figure amongst his 
hght-hearted comrades, an awkward youth in 
the midst of the over-bred children of that 
period. 

General Joffre himself is not given to 
reminiscences, and if there are any of his 
companions of the time still living they could 
hardly be expected to remember the exploits 
of a boy who lacked the distinguishing ear- 
marks of genius to such an extent that even 
as late as 1911, when M. Caillaux, then Prime 
Minister, and M. Messimy, then War Secre- 
tary, urged upon President Fallieres General 
Joffre's eventual appointment as G^n^raHs- 
sime, the public at large was asking — 
'' Joffre ? But who is Joffre ? '' 

No record of a striking exploit on his 
part whilst at this private school can be 
found ; no saying of his that would be out 



8 LIFE OF GENERAL JOFFRE 

of the ordinary is known ; Joffre was but one 
of the grey mass of pupils. Diligent ? Very. 
Brilliant ? Not he. 

Yes ! there is a characteristic trait of the 
then schoolboy, that is frequently referred to 
in the immediate family circle, but which, if 
noticed at all, by teachers or pupils, was 
probably ascribed to an absence of linguistic 
aptitude — General Joffre could not master 
German, and was, in consequence, the four- 
teenth on the list of successful candidates to 
be admitted to the Polytechnic. 

General Joffre knows German now ; but it 
is significant that, even before the Prussians 
succeeded in humiHating France, the French- 
man who was to be chosen to humiliate 
Prussia, felt an aversion to the language of 
the foe. 



CHAPTER II 
LIFE AT THE POLYTECHNIC 

IT was in 1869 that General Joffre entered 
the Polytechnic. It was but a year 
later that, with the rank of second 
lieutenant, he entered the army that de- 
fended Paris against the besieging Prussians. 
This was more than forty-four years ago. 
A lad of but eighteen years, General Joffre 
fought for a lost cause. He saw his country 
torn and bleeding ; he saw the proud standard 
of France brought to the dust by a centuries- 
old enemy ; he saw Alsace and Lorraine cut 
off from their mother country ; he saw 
France's pride trampled underfoot by the 
brutal Bismarck ; he heard the wails of 
widowed women and orphaned children ; but 
if he suffered, if he resented, if he craved 
revenge, he said no word. Silent Joffre he 
was before the war ; silent Joffre he remained 
through the war, silent Joffre he was all 
through the years that came after, and silent 
Joffre he is to-day leading France's armies 
in the cause of all humanity. 

9 



10 LIFE OF GENERAL JOFFRE 

" I remember Joffre at the Polytechnic, 
but only very hazily/' said a retired captain. 
" He would not know my name were it 
mentioned to him, and he would surely be 
angry were he to know that any one of his 
former comrades spoke of him, for orders, 
formal orders, have been issued practically 
forbidding the giving out of any details oi 
the General's former or present life." 

As far as the General's youth is concerned 
no such orders were really necessary. The 
school records give but little information. 
Whatever testimony can be gathered on the 
subject, and it must be remembered that all 
such testimony is coloured by the glory of 
the General's present position, it indicates a 
lovable nature, shy and not given to demon- 
stration, with self-restraint in constant evi- 
dence, with thoroughness as a leading quality, 
with a readiness to face squarely every issue, 
deeply given to thought and to dream dreams. 

'' Scratch a Catalonian and you discover a 
poet." A reUable witness, M. Emile Hinzelin, 
declares that the student Joffre once composed 
a poem in honour of Alsace-Lorraine, after 
the war of 1870, of which the first two lines 
were : 

J'ai potty reve d'espoir ei vision d'amour 
U eclair de nos fusils en mar die sur Strasbourg 



LIFE AT THE POLYTECHNIC ii 

or in English, '' The dreams of my hope and 
the visions of my love lie in seeing our rifles 
resume the march on Strasbourg '* ; more 
prophetic perhaps than poetic. 

On the other hand it is recounted in 
Rivesaltes that at the age of eleven General 
J off re was asked to join in a game by the boys 
of the neighbourhood. He refused on the 
plea of having lessons to prepare. Taunts 
failed as well as cajolings. It was hard even 
then to swerve Joseph Joffre from his purpose. 

Exasperated, the leader of the boys struck 
a vicious blow at the eleven-year-old Joffre. 
For once the lessons were forgotten, quiet 
Joseph became a warring lion ; but the battle 
over, he calmly picked up his books and 
hurried home to make up for lost time. 

With the exception of actual warfare, this 
is the only record of a fight in General Joffre's 
life. 

Straggling memories of men, who are eager 
to remedy the lack of interest they exhibited 
in the man, who at present fills popular 
imagination in France to the same extent as 
did Napoleon a hundred years ago, show that, 
if not greatly liked because of his reticence, 
Joffre was respected while a student at the 
Polytechnic. The truth of this is borne out 
to a great extent by the fact that General 



12 LIFE OF GENERAL JOFFRE 

Joffre's career is singularly free from jealousy. 
If he did not make friends, neither did he 
make enemies. He never blew his horn, 
being willing to let the results of his work 
speak for themselves, nor did he have others 
sing his praises, and, consequently, he is 
beholden to no one for his achievements. 



CHAPTER III 
ENTERS THE ARMY 

FROM the very beginning of his life 
General Joffre has seemed to move 
along a straight Hne, and it is more 
than probable that the General of to-day 
differs but little in his mental and moral 
make-up from the student of forty-five years 
ago. 

Neither by the stroke of chance nor through 
his own aggressiveness did Second-Lieutenant 
Joffre distinguish himself in the campaign 
of 1870. '' He did his work and did it well/' 
declared one of his former superior officers 
in speaking of that disastrous campaign. 

It is hard to make General Joffre himself 
speak of that period. As a matter of fact it 
is impossible to make him speak of himself 
at all. He is not a sociable man, and there is 
nothing that would lead one to suppose that 
he was any different at the beginning of his 
career. 

He saw the Prussians sweep before them 
the French resistance, but even in his youthful 

13 



14 LIFE OF GENERAL JOFFRE 

enthusiasm he conceived no dare-devil plan 
to destroy the foe, as many another young 
French officer of that time did, paying with 
his hfe for the attempt. He witnessed the 
Commune with all its horrors, and unUke 
young Bonaparte, he dreamed not of sub- 
duing the mob to his own will, but most Kkely 
of his studies so rudely interrupted by the 
war. 

Those who know the General do not hesitate 
to assert that the goddess of chance never^ 
smiled upon him too kindly, for whatever he 
is, and whatever he has accomplished, was 
due to constant appHcation to the problems to 
be solved. His love of study, his joy at 
having performed a difficult task were the 
cause of the only recorded outburst of enthu- 
siasm on his part. 

Years after the siege of Paris, Captain 
Joffre, while inspecting some fortifications 
at Versailles, fell with his horse and was so 
badly injured that a long rest was ordered. 
He went to Rivesaltes and there, in the 
loneliness of his room, he passed days of agony, 
waiting to see whether or no the verdict of 
the physicians that he would never again 
be able to resume his mathematical studies 
would come true. 

Not a word of complaint escaped his lips, 



ENTERS THE ARMY 15 

not a sign of anxiety showed on his face, as 
he asked for pen and ink and set himself 
arduously to the task of solving the most 
complicated and difficult mathematical 
problems. 

Day after day passed, and whenever his 
anxious relatives tip-toed into the room, they 
always found him hard at work, tearing up 
sheets of paper and recommencing his calcu- 
lations. 

The J off res are not given to demonstrative 
speeches or acts, but the GeneraFs sister 
confesses that the family began to worry, lest 
the disappointment of being unable to pursue 
his Hfe's work would upset his mind. 

One evening, as his father was getting ready 
to go to sleep, the future G^nerahssime burst 
into his room, joyously shouting : '' It's all 
right ! Fm well ! Tm saved ! " 

He had succeeded in solving a most abstruse 
and intricate problem, and his joy at having 
recovered his mental capacity was so great 
as to overcome his physical sufferings. 

But to return, the moment the war of 1870 
was over, and peace was signed, young Joffre 
re-entered the school, and about two years 
later graduated as full lieutenant. He was 
but one of scores of other young men who had 
chosen the army as their profession. No 



i6 LIFE OF GENERAL JOFFRE 

predictions as to his future success were made 
— army promotions are slow and tedious when 
there is no war, and France then had no 
thoughts of anything buf peace. 

Perhaps, in his Pyrenean home, an old 
father hoped to see his eldest son become a 
General ; perhaps his brothers and sisters 
beHeved firmly and staunchly in his star ; 
but even they said nothing, save to wish him 
God-speed. 



CHAPTER IV 
LIFE AS A SOLDIER 

THEN began for him the uneventful 
Ufe of a soldier in days of peace. 
Graduating from the military school 
did not mean to him the cessation of his 
studies. Quite the contrary. He worked as 
hard if not harder, at his beloved mathe- 
matics ; but if he planned anything beyond 
his immediate duties, he kept it a strict secret 
to himself. 

Little is known of the life he led during that 
period. If he had any companions they have 
thus far failed to come forward to claim the 
distinction ; if he made any friends, they 
remain unknown. 

" Joffre ? Who is Joffre ? " would have 
been the answer of most lieutenants in the 
Paris garrison had they been asked about their 
silent comrade-in-arms . 

One day Field-Marshal MacMahon happened 
to visit the section of the fortifications being 
constructed under Joffre's supervision. He 
was so surprised at the perfect manner of the 

^7 B 



i8 LIFE OF GENERAL JOFFRE 

work, that, turning to the youthful officer, 
he said : ^' I congratulate you, Captain ! " 

This was in 1876. Joseph Joffre became a 
captain at twenty-four years of age. 

This sudden promotion was the only piece 
of luck, mere luck, that has ever occurred to 
General Joffre. However, his work was re- 
cognized, and his promotion meant greater 
opportunity for the application of his ability. 

If the Joffres suffer from an inability to 
make friends easily it is not due to any form 
of boastful pride. 

Joseph Joffre may have kept aloof from his 
army associates, he may have shunned social 
duties, or again, he may have been so absorbed 
by his work as to neglect every other phase 
of life, but it was not due to any false pride, 
for the Joffres are level-headed, and they have 
the faith in themselves that justifies, in their 
own eyes, whatever honours may come to 
them. The General Joffre of to-day, reticent 
as he may be, is as simple in his manner and 
behaviour as were his father and grandfathc r 
before him. 

It is said that when Joseph Joffre, newly 
made a general, came on one of his frequent 
visits to Rivesaltes, one of his father's neigli- 
bours who used to address him always in 
the pronoun '' thou," as is the custom in the 



LIFE AS A SOLDIER 19 

French rustic communities, haltingly began 
his speech with the pronoun '' you/' 

The General stopped him. 

'' I did not dare to say ' thou ' to him," ex- 
plained the old man afterwards. '' But he 
wouldn't listen to me. ' Thou ' it was until 
now, and ' thou ' it will remain he said. So 
I never bothered any more." 

Of strong physical build, of clean habits 
and of great moral strength. Captain Joffre 
never found his loneliness a burden. He was 
a glutton for work, and he loved his work. 

No doubt he was ambitious, but those who 
know him best declare that, were he still 
nothing more than a captain, he would be as 
happy as, if not happier than, he is to-day, 
holding the position of the man upon whom the 
eyes of the whole world are centred at 
present. 

He worked at building fortifications in 
Paris, Versailles, Montpellier ; he built 
barracks in Brittany ; he went where he was 
sent, always doing his work a little better than 
was demanded of him, and always finding 
sufficient reward in the accomplishment of 
the task. 

From 1876 until 1884 Joffre led the usual 
Hfe of a garrison officer. Promotion was slow. 
The army in France lost to a great extent at 



20 LIFE OF GENERAL JOFFRE 

that time its power as a military force, and 
became in the same degree the field for poli- 
tical intrigues. 

There were a good many hot-heads shouting 
for revenge on Germany ; but France was too 
prosperous to contemplate a repetition of the 
horrors and losses of war. Paul Deroulede 
was composing his patriotic songs and found- 
ing his patriotic league, but he was frowned 
upon by the middle classes. Royalists suc- 
ceeded now and again in stirring up fears for 
the Republic's existence ; but, while the 
Republic became part and parcel of France's 
national existence, Paris ceased to be the 
centre that dictated to the rest of the country 
what should or should not be done. 

General Boulanger came and went, and with 
him went the last hope of the Royalists of 
forcing a military dictatorship and a subse- 
quent royal regime upon France. 

The war of 1870 sounded the death-knell of 
hero-worship in France. 

So many idols proved but earthenware 
images, so many '' hopes '' developed into 
bitter disappointments, that the people at 
large were content with the poHtical system 
of the day, so long as it involved them in no 
wild adventures. 

If the army continued a worshipped insti- 



LIFE AS A SOLDIER 21 

tution with the seekers of a " revanche," to 
the average French citizen it became but a 
burdensome necessity and its leaders a subject 
of unpleasant memories. 

Not only did the army become under such 
circumstances a favourite field for playing for 
popular favour by whoever happened to be 
Secretary of War ; but the Republican 
Government, possibly more from an idea of 
self-preservation than out of love for demo- 
cratic rule, saw to it that no over-strong or 
ambitious man was placed at the head of the 
military arm of Government. 

Not that Joffre, silent and somewhat 
morose, could have excited the popular 
fancy. He lacked political pull, and, still 
more, the opportunity to prove his sterling 
qualities as an organizer, for army organiza- 
tion, which means the welding of the army 
into a compact machine that obeys the orders 
of its chief, was exactly what the pohticians 
did not want. 

The men who were then guiding the des- 
tinies of France could not be accused of being 
unpatriotic. But the treaty with Russia 
seemed a sufficient guarantee that Germany 
would not dare to attack again, and the 
French people, with some exceptions, became 
thorough pacifists and were wiUing to forgive 



22 LIFE OF GENERAL JOFFRE 

and forget the brutal seizure of Alsace and 
Lorraine. 

Perhaps Joffre, to-day *' Our Joffre/' 
fretted at the lack of opportunity ; but he 
loved his vocation and he applied himself 
with zeal and zest to the construction of 
fortifications, and when work languished he 
studied. He studied to improve his know- 
ledge, he studied to obtain pleasure, and he 
studied for the very love of study. 

The years went by. Joffre's tousled thick 
hair began to show streaks of gray. His face 
began to show deep lines. Still he was only a 
captain. 

The unspoken question in the eyes of his 
father whenever he greeted his eldest son on 
the latter's visits to Rivesaltes remained un- 
answered, and it began to seem as if the old 
man's secret dream of having a general in his 
family was doomed never to be realised. 

There is one remarkable feature of the 
human side of General Joffre. He seemed to 
revel in being lonely. He never sought noisy 
distractions to help revive his drooping spirits 
or to drive away his fits of melancholy. A 
game of cards with his father is the only 
gambling he has ever been credited with, and 
this game has ever been *' manille," as inno- 
cent of complications as any child's amuse- 



LIFE AS A SOLDIER 23 

ment. Sometimes his relatives and his 
father's friends would take part in the game, 
and he would have been indeed a far-seeing 
prophet who would have predicted that the 
quiet officer, whose features lacked either the 
aquiUnity of Caesar or the determination of 
WelHngton, would be called upon one day 
to play as great, if not a greater, part than 
either of these great figures of history. 

It was during one of these games that 
General Joffre made the now famous remark, 
by the way, the only famous saying of this 
silent man, while advising his father to dig 
oblique trenches on the family property at 
Bompas, in order to faciUtate the irrigation 
and prevent the annual inundations in spring 
time. 

'' Eh ! que diable,*' he exclaimed when his 
father argued against the innovation, *' je 
m*y connais en tranchees ; c'est mon metier !'' 
What General Joffre, in a rather irreverent 
way, declared means in good English : '' What 
the devil ! I know all about trenches ; 
trenches are my speciality.'' 

The war of 1914 will go down in history as 
the war of trenches, and General Joffre is 
master of the art. 



M 



CHAPTER V 

THE STARTING-POINT 

Y brother was always lost in thought, 
and no matter what he did his 
thoughts never left him/' tells his 
sister, Madame Artus, who, unHke the 
General himself, loves to talk of her illus- 
trious brother, although admitting that she 
does so in fear and trembling, as the 
General has forbidden any one of his family 
to make of him a subject of reminiscences. 
''Any one who knows him at all knows 
also his favourite gesture of passing his 
hand across his forehead, as though driv- 
ing away a persistent idea. He loves long 
walks, and he loves to walk alone. Few 
know that he was once arrested for a spy. 

'' He came to Rivesaltes on a visit, and one 
day he walked as far as the cite de Prats-de- 
Mollo. The famous fort constructed by 
Vauban attracted his attention, and he began 
to examine it with the interest of a professional 
fortress builder. The corporal of the batterv 
decided that the man in the civiUan dress was 

24 



THE STARTING-POINT 25 

nothing but a German spy, so he promptly 
arrested him. 

*' Did my brother protest ? Not he. He 
permitted himself to be brought before the 
officer, and proved not to be a German by 
speaking in as broad a Catalonian dialect as 
only a native of the Pyrenees could do. 

'* ^ Why did you not tell them whom you 
were ? ' we asked him on his return. ' I was 
thinking of the fort/ he replied, unconscious 
of anything unusual in his behaviour." 

It was not until 1884 that Joffre was 
officially recognised as the master of the art of 
building fortifications. 

His work was noticed, and, when Admiral 
Courbet telegraphed from. Kelong, the port 
on the Island of Formosa, for an officer who 
understood thoroughly the way to dig trenche^. 
and to erect forts, Joffre was chosen for the 
task. 

Strictly speaking, this was the starting- 
point of General Joffre's career. 

It was at the period when this troubled 
island seemed essential to French interests 
in Asia. The island's riches had attracted 
already the Spaniards, but neither they, nor 
the Chinese, nor the Japanese, who appeared 
on the scene in 1874, proved equal to the 
difficulties presented by the topographical 



26 LIFE OF CxENERAL JOFFRE 

conditions, the climate and the savage popu- 
lation. 

France's occupation of Kelong was but of 
one year's duration, but it was important in 
establishing French rights, and excluding from 
Formosa the growing German influence in 
the Far East. 

Captain Joffre, for he still was but a captain, 
was put to work on the tremendous task of 
making Kelong a formidable fortress. To 
paraphrase the immortal words of Tennyson, 

His was not to reason why 
His was to do and try,'' 

and Captain Joffre set to work without a 
moment's thought of the fact that the task 
set before him was insurmountable in view of 
the lack of men and of material. 

When the Japanese by the treaty of 
Simonoseki came into lawful ownership of 
the island, they paid frank and honest tribute 
to the work of the French troops ; but at the 
time, save for the praise from his immediate 
superiors, Captain Joffre had to content him- 
self with the satisfaction of a work well 
done. 

And he did work ! There are still stories 
current of how the '' silent captain " did not 
only his own share of the work, but performed 



THE STARTING-POINT 27 

the duties of many other men, who preferred 
an easy rest during the tropical heat to 
fighting pestilent insects and digging 
trenches. 

Thirty years have passed since that time. 
Most of the men who served with Joffre have 
either gone to join their forefathers or else 
are content to rest upon their laurels . Captain 
Joffre, who was frequently the butt of good- 
natured jokes in the officers' club, has risen 
to heights undreamed of then. 

it was a long year of hard and thankless 
toil but Joffre's work was once more recog- 
nised, and he was sent to Hanoi, the capital 
of the province of Tonkin, Indo-China. There 
he occupied the position of commander of the 
sappers, receiving at the same time the first 
official thanks of the Government since the 
day, nine years before, when Marshal 
MacMahon made him a captain. 

Captain Joffre was decorated with the 
Legion of Honour. 

The work of Joffre in Indo-China forms a 
chapter in the history of civiHsation similar, 
though on a much smaller scale, to the work 
of Colonel Getzel in Panama. As a matter of 
fact, were General Joffre a fame-seeking man, 
he could with some degree of confidence 
claim that the American engineers imitated 



28 LIFE OF GENERAL JOFFRE 

his methods in making Hanoi a habitable 
place. 

Not satisfied with the work that came to 
him in the ordinary run of events, Captain 
Joffre set out to rid the region over which he 
reigned of the pestilential marshes that in- 
fected the air causing a tremendous mortaUty 
both amongst the natives and the French 
soldiers. 



CHAPTER VI 
HIS WORK IN THE EAST 

IF his immediate superiors took but little 
notice of his efforts, probably looking 
upon him as only a small cog in the 
governmental wheel that was endeavouring 
to make of Indo-China a prosperous French 
colony ; if his work forms now but a for- 
gotten chapter in the history of French 
colonies ; there is one town in Indo-China that 
still remembers Joffre and his work, and 
that boasts of a wide avenue of few houses 
and no pavements which bears the proud 
inscription — Boulevard Joffre. 

This town is Vietri, and Captain Joffre 
spent several months there, working, thinking, 
planning, and always preparing, though un- 
consciously, for the task that was to become 
his in 1914. 

In 1886 Vietri was but a frontier post, 
erected at the junction of two small rivers. 
Pirates made continuous attacks upon the 
inhabitants, and those of the latter who 
escaped death at the hands of the ban- 

29 



30 LIFE OF GENERAL JOFFRE 

dits, were being ruthlessly decimated by 
disease. 

A mounted company of the Foreign Legion 
and a troop of sappers formed its defending 
and attacking force, and Captain Joffre was 
at the head of the latter. 

It was at Vietri that Joffre performed a 
task, which under other circumstances and 
in other surroundings would have been 
sufficient to gain for him fame and recognition. 
When he came, Vietri was a plague-beset 
town ; when he left, Vietri might have been 
a village transplanted from the French 
Riviera to the tropics. 

Even to-day, an Annamite mother lulling 
her baby to sleep may be heard muttering 
something about the '' man of the eyebrows,'* 
and hardly any one of the white residents over- 
hearing her would suspect that she refers 
to no one else but Captain, now Generalissime 
Joffre. 

He certainly left his imprint upon Vietri, 
and the natives, with the aptitude of savages, 
noticed the pecuHarity of his enormous eye- 
brows and named this white chief " the man 
of the eyebrows." Since General Joffre has 
come to occupy the centre of the world's 
stage, the Annamite appellation *' Y en Ong 
Daumat,'' in French *' L'homme aux sourcils " 



HIS WORK IN THE EAST 31 

has been spread to the four corners of the 
earth. 

Not even the tropical cHmate^ the loneHness 
of the evenings in what to every white man 
must have been the wilderness of despair, 
failed to change Captain Joffre's mentality 
or his behaviour towards his fellow men. 

He lived alone, out of choice ; whenever 
free from duty, he buried himself in papers 
and books ; he worked incessantly and never 
appeared tired. Then as now his capacity 
for work knew no bounds. 

'' This Captain was a solidly built Pyrenean, 
calm and clear-headed, with a firm walk and 
a hard blue eye,'' says a contemporary of his 
in Indo-China. '' He seldom smiled, he spoke 
still more rarely, and he never punished 
unless in an extreme case, but then it was 
a hard punishment. The natives feared himi 
because of his silence ; they loved him 
because of his justice." 

This picture of Joffre of twenty-nine years 
ago may serve as a picture of him to-day. 
Justice in the eyes of Joffre meant and means, 
before everything else, conscientiousness in 
performing a given task. 

Although helping to pave the way for the 
French domination in the Far East, Captain 
Joffre's hfe of that time did not abound in 



32 LIFE OF GENERAL JOFFRE 

adventures. The glory of a daring exploit, 
the joy of a dashing attack, are not the lot 
of a soldier whose energies and ability are 
devoted to building fortifications and digging 
trenches. Still, Joffre's life was far from 
being monotonous. 

Were General Joffre a man of industrial 
pursuits instead of a soldier, he would have 
no doubt been the father of a labour-saving 
system, for all his efforts, from the very 
beginning of his career, have been dominated 
not only by the desire to bring to bear upon 
the work in hand scientific perfection, but 
also by the intention to do it at the smallest 
expenditure of physical force. 

No wonder that, if his subordinates did not 
adore him because of his reticence, they 
respected him as few men were or will be 
respected by those they command. 

'* Method is the mother of great achieve- 
ment,*' has become a trite sa3dng in this age 
in which a witty Frenchman declared that 
'' Inspiration was the source of all true folly." 
Method and Joffre are synonymous. 

Captain Joffre had no great opportunity for 
distinction. A man who was doing his work 
and was content to remain practically un- 
known at a period in French history when 
it was necessary to blow one's own trumpet 



HIS WORK IN THE EAST 33 

if rapid reward was desired, was very apt 
to be overlooked in the list of promotions. 

When Joffre left Indo-China in 1888, he 
was still a Captain, and no one thought, he 
himself probably least of all, that he was 
in the future to write some of the most im- 
portant pages in the history of France. 

If he was disappointed, no one heard of 
it. He did his duty, he loved his work, 
and when he came to Rivesaltes to visit his 
old father, he never breathed a word about 
promotion, nor was he asked about it. 

But he continued to study and to learn. 
If it is true that a physician's course of study 
never ends, it is equally true in regard to a 
man in the engineering profession. To know 
all new ideas and to be able to apply them in 
practice with certitude as to results, this is 
the ideal of the man who helps to build, no 
matter what direction his efforts may take. 
Joffre is such a man, has been such a man 
from the earliest stages of his career. 

And he continued to play the game of 
*' manille '' with his father and the latter 's 
friends, and used the time accorded to him 
by his superiors for rest, in mastering to a 
still greater degree his profession. 

But men like Joffre do not pass unnoticed. 
Though he himself had not hfted a finger to 



34 LIFE OF GENERAL JOFFRE 

make his ability known, he nevertheless 
acquired the reputation of being one of the best 
military engineers in the army, and of one who 
'' loved his profession to a degree which made 
him, politically speaking, not a dangerous 



man/* 



It must be remembered that France of that 
period was not the France of to-day. There 
is an analogy between the state of things in 
France then and that of South American States 
after the Civil War. The latter, weakened by 
the struggle, became the prey of northern 
politicians ; France, nearly broken by the 
unequal struggle with Germany, was at the 
mercy of home-bred statesmen, who put their 
personal profit before their country's welfare. 

Captain Joffre, soldier before everything 
else, worker above anything else, as ruggedly 
honest as only those whose home is amidst 
sky -towering mountains are apt to be ; 
unable, because of his nature, to kow-tow 
for favours ; unwilling to secure favouritism 
at the loss of his pride, and certain not to 
insist upon recognition of his work because 
of modesty, was marked as a very useful man, 
and notice was probably taken of him that 
he could be used as an instrument to pave 
the way for the promotion of others, who 
were more important pohtically. 



HIS WORK IN THE EAST 35 

Jeffreys arrival in France was not hailed 
by cheering multitudes. He came to Paris, 
reported himself as ready for new service 
and was attached to the staff of the general 
commanding the engineering branch of the 
French Army. 

After the activity of his life in Formosa 
and Indo-China, the enforced comparative 
idleness of office work would have hung 
heavily upon the hands of any other man 
but Joffre. To Joffre it was but another 
opportunity to perfect his knowledge, and 
he worked at the tasks assigned him as 
ardently as he worked upon the fortifications 
of Hanoi, Kelong, and Vietri. 

Perhaps because his superiors were some- 
what ill at ease in the presence of this tireless 
Commandant ; perhaps because it was realised 
that ofiice-work was not the field for him, 
a short time afterwards he is found as an 
officer on active service with the Fifth 
Infantry Regiment. 

It would be an impossible task to trace his 
life in that period. Whether Joffre thought 
of the ungratefulness of his country or not 
is never to be known ; but that he made 
as efficient an officer in his new sphere as in 
the old, of that there is no doubt. 



CHAPTER VII 
HIS ONE ROMANCE 

ONE year after his arrival in France, 
Captain Joffre was named Com- 
mandant, and as such he continued 
to be employed in the work of fortifying 
France against a future invasion by an enemy ; 
but this time he was attached to a railway 
regiment, a position that gave him the 
opportunity for the study of the railroad 
system of France, a study which probably 
accounts for the marvellous mobihsation re- 
sults achieved in France at the beginning of 
this war. 

Thirteen years had Captain Joffre to wait 
before getting his fourth stripe. His life was 
a busy one every minute of these years 
but many other things happened also, among 
them his marriage in 1884 to Mile. Marie- 
Am61ie Pourcheiroux, and her death one 
year after. 

The marriage was a happy one. Captain 
Joffre had a pleasant bass-voice — General 
Joffre still loves to sing in his family circle — 

36 



HIS ONE ROMANCE 37 

his wife was a born musician, and evil tongues 
at Montpellier, where he spent the best part 
of his early married life, declare to-day that 
'' Captain Joffre lacked dignity.'' 

Little is known of his courtship, still less 
of his brief honeymoon. If an Englishman's 
home is his castle, a Frenchman's home is his 
sanctuary, and Captain Joffre had no friends, 
save those in distant Rivesaltes, whom he 
would introduce into his holy of holies. 

One year after having led the woman he 
loved to the altar, she died. 

What he suffered no one will ever know. 
But the Joffre who, under the influence of 
love, turned occasionally into a dreamer, 
disappeared for ever, leaving in place a man 
of indomitable energy and unlimited capacity 
for work. 

Say to any of the Frenchmen who adore 
and venerate their war leader, that there 
were days when the stern-visaged warrior 
actually hummed a sentimental chansonette 
as he passed to and from his work, and a stare 
of incredulity would be the only reply. Tell 
to the generals and officers of the French 
General Staff that their head, whose iron will 
and unswerving driving power serves to 
them as the best assurance of success, forgot 
to be severe under the influence of tender love. 



38 LIFE OF GENERAL JOFFRE 

and a shrug of the shoulders would be the 
reward for the information. Somehow, one 
cannot imagine General Joffre as a serenading 
lover. But his silence has covered and covers 
many traits which, if known, would make 
the portrait of him in the minds of the people 
more fixed and lovable still. 

The tragedy of his wife's death did not 
dry up the sources of tenderness, the power 
of imagination, the sense of poetry in his 
soul ; but it made him seek forgetfulness in 
his work. He redoubled his efforts ; and 
from the year of his bereavement must be 
marked the second epoch in the personal 
development of Joffre. 

This is a period in General Joffre's Hfe 
which is completely obscured by an im.- 
penetrable fog. There is an absolute lack 
of any personal information ; but his name 
appears once more in public documents, 
when in 1891 he was appointed to the chair of 
fortifications at the Artillery and Military 
Engineering School of Fontainebleau. 

Apparently some one kept an eye on Cam- 
mandant Joffre, some one was determined 
that his abihty and knowledge should not 
become wasted. Rumour names that some 
one, as rumour would have it that throughout 
the subsequent career of General Joffre this 



HIS ONE ROMANCE 39 

some one played the part of guardian angel to 
him, and that this some one is not only still 
among the living, but that the present war 
brought new laurels to his fame, for he is 
no one other than General Gallieni. 

The MiHtary School at Fontainebleau is 
intended for the graduates of the Polytechnic 
who, though possessing the rank of second 
lieutenant, wish to perfect themselves in the 
science of artillery and fortifications. 

For two years Commandant Joffre lectured 
upon the construction of fortifications, and 
his lectures are still remembered as excellent 
examples of graphic description of scientific 
principles, lavishly interspersed with illus- 
trations derived from his own experiences. 

He taught and he learned at the same 
time. 

'' Professor Joffre was the most diligent 
student among us," is the comment of a grey- 
headed colonel, who now serves under his 
former teacher. '' He was not popular with 
the students. He was too grave a man, too 
great a disciplinarian, too exacting an ex- 
aminer. But he was respected because we 
all instinctively felt that he was just, and 
that he demanded nothing more from us than 
he would have demanded of himself. 

** On the other hand, he was able to 



40 LIFE OF GENERAL JOFFRE 

implant knowledge in a miraculous way, and 
those who studied under him never forgot 
what they learned. All he taught was so 
methodically arranged, so clearly demon- 
strated, so logically presented, that he would 
indeed be a hopeless incapable who could not 
absorb knowledge imparted by Professor 
Joffre." 

It is interesting to cast a retrospective 
view upon the France of that period. 

If there is just complaint that the war of 
1914 found France in a state of unprepared- 
ness the fault for which must fall entirely 
upon the shoulders of France's politicians 
of the period soon following the war of 1870 
and of their immediate successors, the chaos 
that ruled supreme in the high army circles 
of France at the time Joffre was lecturing 
at Fontainebleau can be justly described 
as a calamity. 

Pontics in the army was one of the worst 
features of the France of that time, a feature 
that was to result later in the Dreyfus affair 
and almost in the fall of the Republic itself. 
Were Joffre a man of another temperament, 
he might have exhibited some annoyance at 
being patronizingly patted on the shoulder by 
his immediate superiors and told that he did 
well. 



HIS ONE ROMANCE 41 

But Joffre is Joffre, and this means first of 
all, silence, and then, a philosophic mind. 

When his father's neighbours were jocularly 
asking old Gilles Joffre as to when his son 
would become a general, the old man used to 
answer : '' Bah ! Tout finit par arriver ! " 
Everything arrives in the end ! 

Commandant Joffre worked as a Professor 
for two years, and then he was once more 
called upon to leave France. 



CHAPTER VIII 
THE CAPTURE OF TIMBUKTU 

SOUDAN was now occupying public 
attention in France. She had need of 
paying colonies, and the development 
of her African possessions became a matter 
of the first importance. 

While it was agreed that England must 
play the premier role in Africa, German 
aggression, the development of the Belgian 
Congo, and the progress of the Portuguese, 
made it imperative that France should no 
longer neglect her African territory. 

The first step in this direction was logically 
the betterment of the roads of communica- 
tion and the conquest of Timbuktu, '' the 
mysterious." 

Commandant Joffre was chosen for the 
work of laying a railroad between Kayes and 
Bafoulabe. The honour of floating the French 
standard over Timbuktu fell to Colonel 
Bonnier. 

So far as Joffre was concerned the new 
appointment promised but very little. It was 

42 



THE CAPTURE OF TIMBUKTU 43 

rather an exile ; it was probably a source of 
disappointment to him. He little knew, and 
for that matter no one knew, that it was in 
Africa he was to find his first true glory. 

Soudan at the period was the scene of 
constant fighting between the French troops 
and the Touaregs, and every inch of ground 
gained meant a struggle both before and 
after possession. 

During the time Commandant Joffre was 
supervising the work of building the railroad, 
a work to which he brought, in his usual way, 
all his knowledge, energy and ability as 
organizer, other officers were winning fame 
in actual fighting, in punitive expeditions 
against the marauders who pillaged the 
peaceful population, in capturing native 
fortresses, in a word in that active Hfe which 
to a soldier means both joy and recognition. 

How did Commandant Joffre feel about it ? 
What did he think of it ? Was disillusion- 
ment beginning to take hold of him ? Was he 
still content with the consciousness of a task 
well done ? 

These are questions that cannot be answered 
for *' silent Joffre '' continued his work with 
the same devotion as he showed when but 
one year out of school. 

At the end of 1893 it was decided that the 



44 LIFE OF GENERAL JOFFRE 

French forces were to march against Timbuktu . 
Colonel Bonnier commanded the expedition, 
and he chose Commandant J off re to head a 
supporting force of more than one thousand 
men for the purpose of carrying provisions 
and ammunition for the fighting force. Com- 
mandant Joffre's '' Army '' had for two- 
thirds of its complement native carriers and 
servants. It was not an imposing display of 
power. 

Colonel Bonnier, a dashing and courageous 
officer, paid with his life for the attempt to 
capture Timbuktu, and it thus fell to the un- 
known, and far from dashing, Commandant 
Joffre to bring to a successful issue one of the 
most noted exploits in France's colonial 
history. 

Whatever the result, the starting of the 
expedition meant but little to Joffre himself. 
Once more he was intended to play the part 
of the useful aid to the brilUant man. Fate 
decreed otherwise. 

The plan of the campaign against Timbuktu 
as made by Colonel Bonnier called for the 
main expeditionary force to go by waterway, 
preceded by a gunboat commanded' by 
Lieutenant Boiteux, to whom belongs the 
honour of having been the first to plant the 
French tricolour at Timbuktu, while Com- 



THE CAPTURE OF TIMBUKTU 45 

mandant Joffre was to follow along the left 
bank of the Niger and was to join his chief at 
Timbuktu. 

Commandant Joffre started from Segou on 
December 27, 1893. On January 30^ 1894, 
he learned of the dreadful fate which befell 
Colonel Bonnier*s force. Surprised by the 
Touaregs at Taconbao, Bonnier, together with 
eleven of his officers^ was slain in an attack 
that he failed to foresee and to prepare for. 

The fleeing remnant of the expeditionary 
force joined Joffre's small column. The men 
were panic-stricken, and, had the modest 
Commandant listened to their advice, he 
would have turned back to Segou. Instead 
he went ahead, and on February 12 he entered 
Timbuktu after a march of nearly eight 
hundred miles under conditions that would 
have made the stoutest heart quake with fear 
and presentiment. 

It is too late now to criticize Colonel 
Bonnier. He was a man of exuberant nature, 
of unquestioned courage and undoubted mih- 
tary ability. Probably he lacked prudence ; 
probably he permitted dash to supplant 
method ; probably he fell a victim to un- 
foreseen conditions. 

Commandant Joffre possessed method and 
he had courage ; he had foresight as well as 



46 LIFE OF GENERAL JOFFRE 

ardour, though the latter was hidden behind 
the mask of passivity. On his march to 
Timbuktu his column was attacked by the 
Touaregs ; but the tables were reversed this 
time. It was the Touaregs who found them- 
selves trapped, for there was not a single 
instant in the long days that preceded the 
French entry into Timbuktu, during which 
Commandant J off re was not ready to give 
battle on his own terms. 

Calm and imperturbable, he watched over 
every detail, looked after everything no matter 
how small its importance, and never per- 
mitted his vigilance to lapse. 

'' One may surprise, but to be surprised is 
simply criminal,'' he is quoted as having once 
said. The saying may serve as an emblem of 
his career as a leader of fighting men. 

He reached the place where Colonel Bonnier 
fell in heroic combat, and stopped his march 
to pay honours to the dead and to send to 
France the body of the Colonel. 

The report sent by Commandant Joffre on 
this occasion is a classic from the point of view 
of clear exposition and vivid description. Not 
a word of self-glorification, not a line to 
indicate that the performance was accom- 
panied by grave perils, not a paragraph of 
personal satisfaction. 



THE CAPTURE OF TIMBUKTU 47 

The report covers a period of six and a half 
months, and read in these days, when it 
practically rests with General Joffre whether 
or not France is to retain her place amongst 
the great Powers, it gives new confidence that 
the issue can be decided but in one way — the 
Joffre way — which means victory. 

The report shows every minute preparation 
made by the Commandant, upon whom was 
suddenly thrust the responsibility of leading 
men in battle instead of supervising construc- 
tional work. It also shows such a microscopic 
knowledge of the country, such a deep ac- 
quaintance with the inhabitants as to prove 
that Commandant Joffre's study was not 
confined to the engineering profession alone. 

The dispositions made by him of the troops 
under his command may serve as a model of 
defensive and offensive precautions. Even 
then he showed the quality, which has since 
made him one of the greatest military com- 
manders known to history, of giving equal 
importance to every branch of the army, from 
the fighting part of it to the commissariat. 

'' The frost and the snow defeated 
Napoleon^s army in Russia,'' is an axiom 
accepted by the average man. 

Joffre would never accept such an excuse 
for himself — either he would have been 



48 LIFE OF GENERAL JOFFRE 

fully guarded against such an emergency, 
or he would have not undertaken the 
campaign. 

'' Measure seven times, cut but once/' is 
an oriental proverb. It could very well serve 
as a motto for General Joffre. When the 
small French force started upon the conquest 
of Timbuktu, all the chances for and against 
success were calculated with mathematical 
precision, and it was Commandant Joffre who 
chose the place where the battles should be 
fought, who created the conditions under 
which the fighting was conducted. 

Not a dramatic sentence in the whole of 
the report ! Not a hint that the work pre- 
sented insurmountable difficulties ! Quite the 
contrary, the perusal of this report, without a 
preceding study into the conditions that con- 
fronted Joffre, leaves the impression that the 
march to Timbuktu was a feat of no more than 
ordinary importance. 

Were it not for the tragic death of Colonel 
Bonnier, were it not for the previous struggles 
waged against the tribesmen, the accomplish- 
ment, judged only on the strength of Com- 
mandant Joffre's statement, would have been 
probably looked upon as an incident likely to 
occur in the day's work of any army com- 
mander. 



THE CAPTURE OF TIMBUKTU 49 

The news of the fall of Timbuktu, however, 
created a veritable sensation in France. 

Timbuktu, long surnamed '' the Mysteri- 
ous,'* was one of the secrets of darkest Africa. 
Explorers knew Uttle of it, and but few suc- 
ceeded in reaching its walls. The earliest 
mention of it is found in the life history of 
the Sailor Imbert who was captured and taken 
there as a slave by the tribesmen. In 1858 
Barth succeeded in spending a short time 
within its inhospitable surroundings. In 1880 
the German, Lenz, paid it a brief visit, and in 
1887 Lieutenant Caron anchored the gunboat 
he commanded in its port. But the French 
standard never flew over it, and no serious 
attempt to subjugate its inhabitants was made 
until the unfortunate Bonnier expedition and 
the subsequent triumphant entry of Com- 
mandant Joffre on Februar}^ 12, 1894. 

Less than one month later Commandant 
Joffre was miade Lieutenant-Colonel. 

If the Government began to take serious 
notice of the young officer, the public at large 
remained in ignorance of him. The fall and 
capture of Timbuktu overshadowed the name 
of the captor. 



CHAPTER IX 
THE SUBJUGATION OF THE SOUDAN 

THESE were turbulent days in French 
military circles. The year 1894 will 
pass into history as one of the memor- 
able epochs in the history of France, for it 
was the year in which the Dreyfus case began 
an era of internal discord which was to last 
for more than five years, threatening the very 
foundations of the Republic. 

Although it was not until September of that 
year that Dreyfus was arrested, for months 
there were sinister rumours that *' something 
was rotten in the state of Denmark/' and 
public opinion was in a turbulent and excited 
condition. 

Joffre, away in the wilderness of Soudan, 
was removed from all the machinations that 
convulsed both the army and the nation. 
No doubt he heard about them, but even had 
he been in France at the time, it is doubtful 
if he would have taken any part or side in the 
controversy, so detached and self-contained 
and absorbed was he in his profession. 

50 



SUBJUGATION OF THE SOUDAN 51 

It must be remembered that to the con- 
temporary '' rulers " of the French Army, 
J off re was an insignificant officer, able but not 
dangerous. He had no political value ; as 
an asset in a coup d'etat he was of no import- 
ance ; besides, even in the limited circle of 
the men who were beginning to perceive his 
ability, he was merely respected. 

He was not a man to excite popular imagin- 
ation. He was of too stolid a character to 
ignite the fireworks of popular acclaim. He 
w^as too much of a disciplined soldier to dream 
of utilizing whatever prestige he might have 
acquired for personal ends. 

Probably, were France at the time of the 
Dreyfus case ruled by a man of Napoleon's 
type, were the men at the helm of the French 
Army above the size of pygmies ; were the 
destinies of France really dear to their hearts, 
Joffre, the man of honest ruggedness, of un- 
shakable loyalty, of enormous organizing 
ability, would have been called back to France 
to bring order out of the chaos, in which the 
country was plunged. 

Perhaps in view of the crisis which awaited 
France in 1914, it was to her ultimate ad- 
vantage that the man, upon whom the nation 
placed the task and duty of freeing it for ever 
from the menace of the German danger, 



52 LIFE OF GENERAL JOFFRE 

should have remained unsoiled and un- 
tarnished by the scandals of that black and 
poisonous period. 

Joffre arrived at Timbuktu. No sooner 
had he accomplished the feat of entering 
the town than he received an order from 
the then Governor of the Soudan recalling 
him to Kayes to continue the laying of the 
railroad. 

Was it jealousy ? Perhaps ! Was it lack 
of judgment on the part of his superiors ? 
Most likely. Whatever it was, it aptly 
illustrates the spirit which permeated the 
high command of the French Army at that 
time. 

It may be argued that chance favoured 
Joffre, as except for the unfortunate fate of 
Colonel Bonnier, his role would have been 
reduced to very modest proportions. But in 
tracing the causes of the brilHant result 
achieved by Commandant Joffre it must be 
admitted that success was due not to the god- 
dess of fortune, but to Joffre's refusal to trust 
her in the smallest degree. 

Joffre refused to obey the Governor's 
orders. The refusal was not prompted by 
any anger at his superior's lack of apprecia- 
tion ; it was the result of his determination 
to remain true to his duty. Duty has ever 



SUBJUGATION OF THE SOUDAN 53 

been Joffre's guiding star. He believed that 
circumstances imposed upon him the duty to 
remain, and mindless of the consequences he 
remained at his post. Whether because it 
was thought that there was no more glory to 
be acquired, or because Joffre's value was for 
once fully esteemed, his attitude received the 
approbation of the authorities ; and the 
newly created Lieutenant-Colonel was per- 
mitted to stay undisturbed at Timbuktu. 

For only one year Joffre was in supreme 
command there ; but this year marked the 
complete subjugation of Soudan and its de- 
velopment into a prosperous colony. 

It is not enough to invade an enemy's 
country. Complete victory means the main- 
tenance of conquered territory against all 
future attacks. '' When advance becomes 
useless or impossible, an army must be able, 
no matter what the cost, to hold the con- 
quered territory and die rather than re- 
treat." 

This memorable order of General Joffre 
issued to the French Army in 1914 shows but 
the ripened belief based on experience of the 
man who succeeded in making Timbuktu an 
impregnable fortress. 

Timbuktu fell ; Timbuktu was nominally 
in French hands ; Timbuktu must become a 



54 LIFE OF GENERAL JOFFRE 

French possession in reality, and Joffre began 
the work of bringing this about. 

The battles over, he devoted himself to 
fortifying the French positions in Timbuktu 
proper, and at all strategic points in the 
neighbourhood. He constructed fortifications, 
built blockhouses, gradually extended his line 
of defences into the surrounding country. The 
engineer supplanted the soldier once more. 

At the end of the year 1894, twenty years 
before his appointment to the supreme com- 
mand of the French forces in the struggle that 
is to decide the future of Europe, Joffre was 
rewarded by being made an officer of the 
Legion of Honour. This mark of apprecia- 
tion signalized the end of his labours in the 
Soudan. The country was pacified, the 
natives learned to respect the French soldiers 
as enemies, as they learned not to fear them 
as friends. 

How did Joffre succeed in achieving this 
wonderful result ? The answer is by method, 
knowledge, energy and justice. 

A French officer, who lived a long time 
in English-speaking countries, characterized 
General Joffre's way of getting things done 
by saying : ''He wants what he wants when 
he wants it, and he always knows what he 
wants and why he wants it/' 



SUBJUGATION OF THE SOUDAN 55 

It is not that J off re has ever suppressed 
individual enterprise ; but individual enter- 
prise, with him, must have its raison d'etre in 
the general scheme of things. He has never 
tried to create a mere machine out of the men 
he commanded — the favourite plan of the 
German generals ; but he has ever insisted 
that an army, no matter how large or how 
small, must present a harmonious whole. 

His work done, he received the order to 
return to France. This time he obeyed with- 
out a murmur. There was still much to be 
done ; but the most important part of it, 
the foundation, so to say, laid on solid ground 
and erected in a way to insure it against 
crumbling down, was accomplished. 

Viewed retrospectively, these pages of 
General Joffre's biography form a brilliant 
record, for even then could be applied to him 
with justice the words of President Poincare 
pronounced on the occasion of presenting him 
with the miUtary medal after the battle on 
the Marne. 

'' You have shown " — said the President — 
'' in the command of our armies, qualities 
which cannot be denied even for a brief 
moment : a power of organization, of order 
and of method, the beneficent effects of 
which can be witnessed in the strategy and the 



56 LIFE OF GENERAL JOFFRE 

tactics : a cool and prescient wisdom that 
always knows how to meet the unexpected ; 
a force of soul that nothing can disturb ; a 
serene behaviour, the welcome effect of which 
is the planting of confidence and hope through- 
out the country." 

When he came back to Paris, Joffre became 
accredited to the General Staff as Secretary to 
the Commission on Inventions. 

He arrived at a time when the Dreyfus case 
seemed closed for ever. The unfortunate 
officer stood his trial, was degraded, con- 
demned and sent to the Devil's Island. A 
superficial calm reigned in France. The 
guilty victim was punished, the cancerous 
growth of corruption that threatened the 
destruction of the army was apparently torn 
out by the roots. France breathed more 
easily. 

Nothing shows better Joffre's adaptabihty 
than the fact that his efiiciency was not 
marred in the least by his new appointment, 
so different from the form of activity he pur- 
sued in Africa. 



CHAPTER X 

"A PAIR OF SPECTACLES" 

*' A NECDOTES of General Joffre while he 
Z-\ served in the Soudan ? Those of us 
^ ^ who took part in the campaign re- 
member only his cool-headedness, his not need- 
ing any rest, his being ever ready and, conse- 
quently, proof against all surprises, and the 
fact that somehow or other, this silent man, 
I nearly used the word morose, succeeded in 
inspiring such confidence in himself that no 
one ever thought of questioning his orders/' 
said a grey-headed colonel, still on active 
service, under Jeffreys orders, to the author. 

*' There were no anecdotes that one of us 
could remember — we all were too busy doing 
real work. One cannot help w^orking when 
his chief sets the example ; one does his best 
when his chief will do the task all over 
again, without saying a word, should the 
work have failed to come up to the desired 
standard." 

But there is a story in existence, a story 
which, though lacking in dramatic accessories. 



58 LIFE OF GENERAL JOFFRE 

thrills one with its revelation of the depth of 
the man's devotion to duty. 

Look at a photograph of General Joffre and 
you will notice something strange about his 
left eye. A hazy veil seems to cover it. Do 
not ask the General the cause of it — he pre- 
fers it to remain unnoticed. But here is the 
true version of how he came to receive that 
injury. 

His column was moving on Timbuktu. 
News had just reached him that Colonel 
Bonnier was slain in battle. Sleep was out 
of the question under the pressure of work — it 
was probably in the Soudan that General Joffre 
learned to do without sleep as he proved able 
to do during the early stages of this war — 
every ounce of energy w^as needed for the 
purpose in hand, when the young commander 
was stung in the left eye by a poisonous insect. 
Not that he desisted from his labours, but the 
doctor who accompanied the force noticed 
the inflammation, and, fearing serious results, 
ordered him to wear a bandage. 

'' But how can I direct my troops blind- 
folded ? '' protested Joffre. 

'' Well then, wear blue spectacles, as you 
may otherwise lose your eyesight under the 
glaring rays of the desert sun,'' persisted the 
physician. 



" A PAIR OF SPECTACLES '' 59 

It is needless to say that the order to pro- 
cure blue spectacles was impossible of execu- 
tion. Another man would have declared in 
a tragic manner that he would rather lose his 
eyesight, than endanger his troops. Not so 
Joffre. He said nothing and continued to 
ignore the injury. 

Who does not know the tortures of an 
inflamed eye ? Add to this the hardships of 
a march through a desert amidst constant 
attacks by the tribesmen, and General Joffre's 
sufferings can be imagined. 

The big fight with the Touaregs was fought 
and won. Communication with the rear- 
guard was re-established. The soldiers began 
to receive their mails and packages. Among 
the latter was one addressed to the nephew of 
General Loyre by the uncle. General Loyre 
happened to be an acquaintance of Command- 
ant Joffre, and as the nephew in question was 
invalided home because of illness, Joffre 
decided to open the package — it contained 
among other things a pair of blue spectacles. 

These spectacles probably saved the 
General from total bUndness ; but the mark 
remained for ever in the left eye as proof that 
he does not lack the heroism of physical self- 
sacrifice. 

Life in Paris after the strenuous campaign 



6o LIFE OF GENERAL JOFFRE 

in the Soudan formed a well-earned rest. 
His new duties gave him wide scope for keep- 
ing abreast of all the progress made in the 
field of armament and for enlarging his store 
of technical knowledge. Besides, forming 
part and parcel of the service of the General 
Staff, he could familiarize himself with all the 
details of the plans against a renewed German 
attack. 

Singularly enough, although the Dreyfus 
case had for its birthplace the General Staff, 
General Joffre, whose insight and discern- 
ment must have made him thoroughly cog- 
nizant of all its phases, remained outside the 
path of the storm. 

Very soon the Dreyfus affair was to become 
of world-wide concern ; very soon the taint of 
treachery to the nation was to besmirch some 
of France's greatest soldiers ; very soon the 
country was to be torn by a whirlwind of un- 
loosed passions. Joffre remained calm as he 
remained silent. 

For two years he pursued the peaceful 
avocations assigned to him, and not a word of 
his, concerning the then all-absorbing topic, 
is known to have been pronounced. 



CHAPTER XI 
HIS WORK IN MADAGASCAR 

THERE is a curious coincidence in the 
fact that Joffre, the conqueror of the 
Soudan, returned to France after the 
end of the Dreyfus trial, and that he was to 
he chosen for another distant expedition just 
at the time when the case was to assume a 
much greater importance than before. 

Senator Scheurer-Kestner was about to 
demand the revision of the sentence on 
Dreyfus, w^hen Lieutenant-Colonel Joffre was 
entrusted with the task of creating a fortified 
naval base at Diego-Suarez, Madagascar. 

Madagascar, rich in minerals and in all 
sorts of raw material, had been in the past a 
source of unending trouble to France, who for 
centuries past had been bent upon establish- 
ing her sovereignty over the island on a firm 
foundation. 

Discovered in the year 1500 by the Portu- 
guese, Diego Diaz, Madagascar remained 
practically unknown to Europeans save for 
tentative commercial relations maintained by 

61 



62 LIFE OF GENERAL JOFFRE 

the Portuguese, the Dutch, and the French. 
In 1642 the latter made the first serious 
attempt to take the island under the protec- 
torate of France by establishing, in the manner 
pursued by them in Canada, commercial out- 
posts and erecting a village of more or less 
imposing size — the Fort Dauphin. They were 
compelled to abandon all these efforts in 
1674 ; but in the course of the eighteenth 
century they renewed them several times, 
though with no better results. The early 
nineteenth century saw^ the French trying, in 
real earnest, to include Madagascar among 
their colonial possessions ; but the resistance 
of the powerful tribe, named Hovas, who had 
grown strong by uniting all the smaller tribes 
under their rule, forced the French once more 
to abandon their project. 

It was not until 1885 that the treaty placing 
the island under a French protectorate was 
signed ; but the insurrection which broke out 
soon after left, after it was subdued, Madagas- 
car a simple French colony in 1896. 

General Gallieni, whose role in saving Paris 
from German occupation in the present war 
will entitle him to a pedestal of glory in the 
French Hall of Fame, was appointed Governor 
of Madagascar, and under his rule the island 
flourished and prospered until it became a 



HIS WORK IN MADAGASCAR 63 

jewel of a colony in the truest sense of the 
word. 

More than ten years later it became the 
duty of Joftre to complete the work by con- 
structing a fortified naval base at Diego- 
Suarez. 

That Joffre should have been chosen for the 
task is not at all surprising. It meant de- 
votion and singleness of purpose and, though 
the truth be bitter, there were few, if any, 
other Joffres in the French Army at the 
time. 

Did Joffre himself welcome the new appoint- 
ment ? No doubt the existing conditions 
disgusted the soldier in him, but he said never 
a word — Joffre was and is a disciplinarian. 
Most probably he welcomed the opportunity 
to get away from the stifling atmosphere of 
army intrigues interwoven with scandals such 
as would revolt the honest soul of the Catalo- 
nian to whom duty was life's supreme 
object. 

There is no man in French public life to- 
day who is not known to have taken a pro- 
minent stand in the Dreyfus's affair, save 
Joffre. He must have formed an opinion ; 
endowed by clear-sightedness and logical 
thinking, he must have reached a decision ; 
but he kept silent, and the men, who kept the 



64 LIFE OF GENERAL JOFFRE 

pot of scandal boiling paid but little heed to 
the silent soldier who was^ nevertheless, useful 
and efficient in performing hard and thankless 
tasks. 

But among the men whose hearts were 
bleeding for the pitiful situation into which the 
army of France was brought, the name of 
Joffre began to signify a force for reconstruc- 
tion, a future leader of undisputed character. 

Nature never intended Joffre for political 
success — he has ever lacked the abiUty to 
shine in a personal way, no matter how 
brilliant his exploits ; and it was a kind act 
of Fate towards France that the problem of 
a naval base at Madagascar called him away 
from his country. 

Lieutenant-Colonel Joffre, was made a full- 
fledged colonel, as he set out for Diego- 
Suarez to return once more to engineering, 
leaving purely mihtary achievements to 
others. 

Little did any one suspect, Joffre probably 
least of all, that Madagascar was to close the 
first chapter in his career, and that his subse- 
quent return to France was to mark the be- 
ginning of an epoch which inevitably led 
towards the culminating-point — the command 
of France's Army in the greatest struggle 
known to mankind. 



HIS WORK IN MADAGASCAR 65 

The fortified base at Di6go-Suarez is still 
looked upon as a model of construction of its 
kind. This in itself would have been sufficient 
to cover Colonel Joffre with glory ; but the 
achievement looms still greater when the 
difficulties under which the work had to pro- 
ceed are known. 

There is one quality in General Joffre that 
is noticed the moment one is associated in 
doing work with him. This quaUty consists 
in never being content with the formulation 
of plans and the issuing of orders with the 
injunction that they must be implicitly 
obeyed. General Joffre sets the example — 
his subordinates must of necessity follow his 
lead — in lending his personal endeavours to 
the carrying out of what his mind has con- 
ceived. 

The difficulties he was doomed to encounter 
presented themselves the moment he set foot 
on the shores of Madagascar. 

Now that General Joffre has become the 
cynosure of the whole worlds men who worked 
by his side in former years begin to recollect 
that never for an instant have they known 
of his having been perplexed or angry, 
under the most difficult and exasperating 
conditions. 

The sickroom scene, when Joffre early in 

E 



66 LIFE OF GENERAL JOFFRE 

his career sought to prove to himself whether 
or not the physician's verdict that he was to 
lose his capacity for great mental effort was 
justified, shows clearly both the dogged de- 
termination to eUminate all doubt and the 
subHme fearlessness to face consciously a 
death-dealing blow. 

Perplexity has no place in the composition 
of a man who has mastered method and is a 
model of calm judgment. Anger would have 
meant dissipation of energy, and this has ever 
been a stranger to the *^ Silent man of 
Rivesaltes/' 

But both perplexity and anger would have 
been fully justified by the aspect of affairs at 
the time when Colonel Joffre arrived in 
Madagascar. 

Conditions could be best described by the 
word chaotic ; for once more it must be re- 
membered that efficiency was lacking then 
in the organization of the French Army, 
and army contractors, so frequently described 
as the curse and the pest of an army, were as 
insolent as dishonest, thanks to the regime of 
political preferment. 

No mental portrait can be drawn of a man 
unless the background is presented at the 
same time, and no proper estimate of 
General Joffre's work can be had unless the 



/ 



HIS WORK IN MADAGASCAR 67 

elements unfavourable to success should be 
included in the view. 

There are many great engineers ; there are 
many men possessing superior military know- 
ledge ; but there is but one Joffre, and 
probably, Joffre would not be Joffre had not 
the obstacles helped to mould the man. 

If the Soudan expedition possessed all the 
elements of a picturesque venture, the Mada- 
gascar appointment had all the characteristics 
of a prosaic task beset with many difficulties 
caused by nature and many others that were 
the work of man. 

Joffre's advent into Di6go-Suarez was of 
itself of a discouraging character. 

No sooner did he land than he was plunged 
into the midst of a problem, which unim- 
portant in itself, could be looked upon as a 
true indication of what he was to face in the 
future when his work would begin in earnest. 

Barracks had to be erected. The material 
arrived from France in such a condition of 
disorder and decay that it did not seem 
possible to disentangle it. Men and officers, 
alike, looked with despair upon the unloaded 
mass, raised their hands to heaven, uttered 
unspeakable words, and then retired to curse 
the men responsible. Some advised a de- 
mand for another boatload of material ; but 



68 LIFE OF GENERAL JOFFRE 

others, grown wise through experience, de- 
clared that this would have only meant two 
mountains of debris instead of one. 

It was a desolate and discouraging state of 
affairs. But Colonel J off re arrived, and lo ! 
— the picture changed at once. 

''If men were responsible for creating this 
disorder, it is easy to suppose that men can 
restore the needed order/* was his reply to 
the report he heard. 

He went, he saw, he began to give orders, 
never losing his sang-froid, never uttering a 
complaint against those men in France who 
caused him this extra labour and concern. 
The barracks had to be built, and in the 
reasoning of Joffre, there was nothing else 
to do but to build them with the smallest 
loss of time. 

What was lacking, or could not be found, 
was improvised ; everybody w^as w^orking 
feverishly, driven by the coolness of their 
leader and by his unflagging energy. 

It was not long before the barracks were 
ready, and only a short time ago one of the 
officers, who participated in the work, said : 
*' We never expected to see them finished 
and many of us have not as yet recovered 
from the surprise.*' 

What did Joffre accomplish at Diego- 



HIS WORK IN MADAGASCAR 69 

Suarez ? He found it a natural port of first 
class capabilities. To-day Diego-Suarez is a 
Gibraltar of strength from a naval point of 
view, and its natural facilities have been 
increased a hundred-fold. 

Experts have declared that his work there 
fully deserves the epithet of remarkable. 
His immediate superiors heaped praise upon 
him. The heads of the army expressed their 
pleasure both at the work itself and at the 
quick and efficient manner in which it was 
conducted. 



CHAPTER XII 
JOFFRE— THE MAN 

DIEGO-SUAREZ is General Jeffreys 
monument. An engineering marvel, 
it will live to perpetuate his fame 
as an engineer ! 

But in France, save at his home in humble 
Rivesaltes, little was known of the man. 

It must be admitted that the Joffre of that 
day, lacking as he did his present aureole of 
the Saviour of his country, failed to make 
any personal impression. 

If the greatness of a man be measured by 
the magnetic influence he exercises on all 
those who surround him. Colonel Joffre could 
not be classed among the great men of the 
earth. 

It required the war of 1914 to prove that 
the day of personal magnetism as an asset 
in winning battles has gone. You cannol 
make a trench run by waving your sabre ; 
but you can take it by inspiring your men 
with confidence that it can be done. 

General Joffre has always inspired confi- 
70 



JOFFRE— THE MAN 71 

dence in those who obeyed his orders. They 
have all instinctively felt that to follow him 
can mean but one thing — the surest and 
shortest way of arriving at the desired 
object. 

No one thrilled at his approach with the 
enthusiasm of blind devotion. No one pro- 
claimed himself to be ready to follow him 
unto the very jaws of death. He could make 
his men obey and respect him ; he could not, 
and apparently he never cared to, make them 
love him as Napoleon's guardsmen, for in- 
stance, loved the " Little Emperor.'' 

That is probably why his name and popu- 
larity remained strangers for so long a time. 
On the other hand, it must be remembered 
that Joffre, from the earliest days of his 
military activity, has been guided by the 
principle that precaution is superior to dash, 
that scientific certainty is of more value 
than mere enthusiasm, and that such reason- 
ing can hardly serve to kindle the fires of 
enthusiasm. 

Although he himself could hammer away 
at a problem, asking and needing no rest 
until it was rightly solved, towards his 
subordinates he was, to use an Americanism, 
an '^ easy boss.*' 

Once more it is worth repeating that many 



72 LIFE OF GENERAL JOFFRE 

of the results he achieved were due to his 
instinctive knowledge of how to employ 
human labour to the best advantage. 

It is said that an American steel magnate 
declared of Lord Kitchener : '' What a great 
president the steel trust lost in him ! '' It 
was a raw tribute to Lord Kitchener's organiz- 
ing ability. General Joffre is not only an 
organizer^ he is a wise employer of human 
force besides, so wise indeed that colossal 
undertakings become easy tasks under 
his guidance. 

** There goes old System/' an officer is said 
to have exclaimed in pointing to the passing 
Colonel, as the latter was on the way to 
inspect some work. 

His hearers laughed ; but what they 
laughed at has become the great power that 
succeeded in checking and beating back the 
over-powering German avalanche rushing to 
bury France midst the terror of death and 
ruin. 

And all the time that Colonel Joffre was 
building a fortress in Madagascar to the glory 
of France, other men were busy trampling into 
dust that same glory. 

Esterhazy was tried and acquitted. Colonel 
Picquart denounced the system that per- 
mitted traitors to be present in the highest 



JOFFRE—THE MAN 73 

councils of the army. Emile Zola launched 
his famous '' j 'accuse ! '' France was once 
more in a turmoil, when Colonel J off re came 
home. 

If the hero of Timbuktu passed unnoticed, 
what reason was there for popular acclaim 
for the mere army engineer, successful though 
he might have been. And what cared France 
at the moment for the fact that everything 
was well at Madagascar when she was bleed- 
ing to death, said her enemies, from an internal 
wound ? 

General Joffre took no sides, at least not 
publicly, in the Dreyfus scandal. He was not 
strong enough to impose his views ; and, in 
any case, there is no reason to think that 
he was permitted to know anything of 
the inner intrigues more than any ordinary 
spectator. 

What of his private life ? As almost 
always, it was a sealed book save on his 
periodical visits to his native Rivesaltes. 

He had some friends, but to be a friend of 
General Joffre means above everything else 
to keep this friendship well hidden from 
public curiosity. He went occasionally to 
a theatre, but very occasionally, for the 
drama of life interested him too much to 
permit him to become absorbed in the drama 



74 LIFE OF GENERAL JOFFRE 

of the stage. But he read and studied, 
studied and read, both at work and at res^ ,, 
with music for his chief amusement. 

Few are the men in Paris whom scandal, 
whether justly or not, has not touched at 
one time or another. General Joffre is one 
of the few. 

No enemy has yet come forth to breathe 
a suspicion against him. No betraying 
friend has found within a niche of memory 
anything that could be hurled against him 
in an effort to stain his character. Just as 
no jealous competitor for honours has dared 
to deny that whatever General Jeffreys place 
is to-day it has been fully merited. 

The mystery that surrounds his private 
Ufe has never been the result of the need 
of hiding a skeleton. Joffre is and ever has 
been a self-sufficient man. Some there are 
who apply to him the word '* bear '' ; but this 
is far from the truth. '' Our Joffre '' has 
spent a busy hfe — he never had the time to 
learn the art of practising folly, and, having 
never learned it, has never had any need 
of it. 

Neither has Joffre ever been a seeker after 
favours. The salons of the mighty, the 
drawing-rooms of the rich knew him not. 
He is a true example of the self-made man in 



JOFFRE~THE MAN 75 

a profession where there is small chance of 
arriving at greatness without the opportunity 
of a war. 

As he has never played at being a favourite, 
so he has never had favourites of his own. 
Those who know and love him, also know 
and love this trait of his — he abhors having 
anybody recommended to him. At once his 
brow becomes beclouded, his face grows 
hard. 

'' Haven't I won unaided my success ? " 
he replied once in answer to a '' recommenda- 
tion.'' '* What have I needed but work, 
application, and energy ? '' 

Ability ? It is a pass-word with him. 
Energy ? It receives a warm welcome from 
him. An exacting master, he has never 
withheld his approval of work well done, and 
his appreciation has taken the form of acts, 
though not of words — of these latter he is 
sparing in the extreme. 

'' Well, is your son a general already ? " 
continued to ask in good-natured banter 
Gilles Joffre's Rivesaltes neighbours ; and the 
grey father smiled as he answered with 
pride : 

'' Not yet, but he is a colonel.'* And in the 
appellation '' the colonel's father" he almost 
lost his own identity. 



76 LIFE OF GENERAL JOFFRE 

But one day, it was in 1901, Rivesaltes 
welcomed home Joffre, grown to be a real 
general. The father's dream, his ardent 
wish, his conception of final happiness came 
true — he was the father of a general. 



CHAPTER XIII 
TIDAL WAVE OF PROMOTION 

IT was on October 12, 1901, that Joffre 
was made general. The date marks 
the beginning of an epoch that may 
be rightly described as the epoch of Joffre's 
preparation for the gigantic struggle France 
has had to face in 1914. 

At first he commanded the Second Army 
Brigade ; two years later he is seen as member 
of the Technical Committee at the Ministry 
of War, and one year later as the head of 
this branch of the service. 

He was undoubtedly making progress in 
his career ; but still his name was an enigma 
not only to the public at large, but even to 
the army, though his work was making itself 
felt, and not a few of his colleagues began 
to look upon him as a coming man. 

'' When I look back, I somehow or other 
cannot discover a difference between the 
personality of Commandant Joffre and that 
of General Joffre," said one of the rare men 
who have the right to call themselves the 

n 



78 LIFE OF GENERAL JOFFRE 

Generars intimates. '* His grade changed, 
but he has ever remained the same. Pro- 
motion pleased him, it never spurred him on. 
He never ceased to study, for he could never 
bring himself to believe that one could 
exhaust the possibihties of any subject. 
His manner, too, never changed. To-day, 
the Generalissime of the French Army is 
as simple, as unpretentious, as eager for 
knowledge as he was when, as captain, he 
began his life-work. His achievements may 
awe others ; he himself regards them as 
being all in a day's work. Honours gratif}^ 
him, he would not be human were it other- 
wise ; but he would not sacrifice a single 
principle for the sake of them. He loves his 
country and will give his life in serving it ; 
but he would not impose himself upon it. 
That is why we know that he fully meant 
his words, pronounced but a few months 
ago, that he looked forward eagerly to a rest, 
after victory had been won, a rest that would 
include retirement from active life." 

But in 1904 retirement was not even 
considered by General Joffre. There was 
work to be done, plenty of it ; there was 
great need of his organizing ability ; there 
was an urgent call for the introduction of 
method into the army service. 



TIDAL WAVE OF PROMOTION 79 

General J off re gave the best that was in 
him, as he always did ; but if it took thirteen 
years for the captain to win the fourth stripe 
that signifies the commandant's rank, it took 
but four years for the brigade general to 
become the commander of a division. 

The year 1905 saw two events in his hfe. 
On March 24 of that year he was made a 
division general. On April 26 he married for 
the second time. 

Artillery general in 1901 ; infantry general 
in 1905, Joffre found himself in a congenial 
sphere everywhere, and everywhere he went 
he built, he constructed, he changed things 
for the better, and in the souls of all whom he 
commanded he implanted confidence. 

No higher compliment could be paid to an 
officer than the one contained in the words 
of a sergeant who served under Joffre in 
Formosa, and who was one of those who 
remembered the '' man who never spoke," 
as Joffre was named in a spirit of exaggeration. 

*' When Joffre is in command,'' he said on 
learning of the General's appointment to be 
the absolute head of the French Army, 
'' there is no need of worry. Success is 
assured. That man Joffre is a veritable 
wolf -trap for the enemy." 

In the crude way of the unlettered man, 



8o LIFE OF GENERAL JOFFRE 

the sergeant expressed the exact valuation 
of General Joffre. He knows how to trap 
the enemy, he spent his life in acquiring this 
knowledge, he learned how to use it, and, 
since August 1914, he has repeatedly used it, 
thus fully justifying the confidence placed in 
him by the nation. 

In times of peace, the soldier's life does not 
abound in interesting episodes. In the calm 
that reigned in France after the uproar of 
the Dreyfus affair, the inner life and routine 
of the army became firmly shut off from the 
public gaze. 

Everybody knew that great reforms were 
being introduced ; that every effort to give 
to France a fighting force worthy of her 
traditions was being made, and that there 
was no reason to fear that the '' enemy,'' as 
Germany has been known since 1870, would 
find the country unprepared. But save for 
the yearly reviews at Longchamps and 
Vincennes, the army was a closed book. 

Under such conditions it was but natural 
that the man, who did not stir popular imagin- 
ation by the capture of Timbuktu, should 
remain more than ever in the shadows of 
obscurity. Despite the important work he 
was doing, General Joffre was little known 
beyond official and family circles. 



TIDAL WAVE OF PROMOTION 8i 

He was a member of numerous Com- 
missions that were investigating important 
military changes ; but such changes are 
brought about in secret and not to the sound 
of trumpets. Besides he was not an orating 
general, and the man in the street had no 
opportunity of commenting upon his words 
or deeds because Joffre's name was rarely 
brought to his attention. 

There is little to note in this stage of his 
development before he became the great chief 
of the French Army except the dates that 
indicate the variety and number of his 
activities. 

At one time he commanded the military 
district of Lille ; in 1909 he was at the head 
of the Second Army Corps stationed at 
Amiens. He had thus a good opportunity 
of studying that part of France which is now 
so important a field in the vital struggle in 
the West. 

In 1910 he was made Chief Inspector of 
Military Schools and was at the same time 
called to the High War Council (Conseil 
Superieur de la Guerre) as the French General 
Staff's ruling body is designated. 

He was but fifty-eight years old. His rapid 
strides in the last part of his career not only 
fully made up the loss of time in its early 

F 



82 LIFE OF GENERAL JOFFRE 

stages, but carried him forward on a veritable 
tidal wave of promotion. 

Honours have never brought rest with them 
to Joffre. Every step in his advancement 
meant greater activity to him. But every 
such step seemed to rejuvenate him ; he 
found new strength at every sound of duty*s 
call. 



CHAPTER XIV 
COMMANDER-IN-CHIEF 

WHEN in 191 1 it was decided to 
abolish the dual power in the 
army and to concentrate the 
duties of the Chief of the General Staff, who 
was charged with war preparations, and those 
of the Vice-President of the War Council, 
who was to conduct the war as the head of 
the army, in the hands of one man, General 
Joffre was chosen for the post. 

It was at the height of the Morocco trouble, 
practically at the moment of the *' coup 
d'Agadir,'' when the political horizon was 
covered with dark clouds, when it seemed 
impossible that peace could be preserved, 
when a struggle between France and Germany 
was thought to be inevitable, that General 
Joffre assumed the supreme command of the 
French Army. 

The public wonderingly inquired who was 
the man who thus practically held in his 
hands the future of France ; some recollected 
Timbuktu ; others remembered having seen 

83 



84 LIFE OF GENERAL JOFFRE 

his name in the Army Bulletin ; none knew 
why he was chosen. 

But those who placed upon General Joffre's 
shoulders the responsibility for the future 
welfare of the nation, knew well the reasons 
for their actions. 

It was M. Caillaux, then Prime Minister, 
and M. Messimy, Secretary of War at the 
time, who brought to President Fallieres for 
his signature the decree that was to make 
General Joffre head of the French Army. 
But the choice of General Joffre was made on 
the unanimous advice of the War Council, 
and what is more, his name was proposed by 
General Pau, who was the first choice of the 
War Council and, for that matter, of the 
entire French Army ; but who, in a spirit of 
noble sacrifice, renounced the honour and 
yielded the place to General Joffre. 

The greatest military gift the French nation 
could offer to one of its sons was in the 
possession of Joffre ; but not by any ex- 
terior sign did he show that he had grown 
to be any different from the Joffre of other 
days. 

'' By his simplicity, by his modesty, he 
recalls to mind the great chieftains of Rome, 
at a time when the Republic was at the 
apogee of virile splendour,'* was a recent 



COMMANDER-IN-CHIEF 85 

estimate of General Joffre, and the estimate 
is more than true. 

A task of stupefying proportions v/as as- 
signed to the General. He was to prepare for 
war^ he was to mould an army, he was to find 
ways and means for a successful fight against 
the Prussian military machine, he was to be 
responsible for defeat, he alone was to bear 
the brunt of failure. 

Unflinchingly he accepted the duty, and 
sternly set himself to the task of fulfilling 
his mission. 

What Joffre did, what he accomplished, 
was shown in the first days of the mobiUsa- 
tion ; but his greatest achievement was his 
clear view into the future, his ability to dis- 
cern the character the coming war was to 
assume. 

One year after becoming the First War 
Lord of France, were such a term known in 
his country, General Joffre pronounced, in 
an interview, these historic words : 

** It will not be the commanding generals 
who will gain the battles of the future. 
It will be the colonels and even the simple 
captains. The fighting front will extend 
from 400 or 500 miles, and, under such 
conditions, the will of one man cannot be 
made felt everywhere, for there is but little 



86 LIFE OF GENERAL JOFFRE 

opportunity for new combinations and ruses. 
The role of the commanding general will nearly 
come to an end the moment he will have 
gathered at a desired point in the line of 
battle all the forces that are needed ; the 
role of the colonels and of the captains will 
begin with the first shots fired. They it will 
be who will decide the result of the struggle. 
The troops that will win will be those that 
will hold out the longest, that will prove 
superior in endurance, in energy, and in 
faith in the final victory.'* 

Prophetic though they sound, these words 
were more than prophecy, they were the 
positive statement of positive facts, gathered 
through study and work, of indisputable 
conclusions arrived at through experience 
supplemented by science. 

*' Nothing is improvised when at war,'* he 
declared on another occasion, and this can 
be taken as the key of all his activity during 
the period he has been in supreme command 
of the French Army. 

General J off re probes to the very bottom 
of things ; his lucid mind does not tolerate 
half certainties nor admit any illusions. 
Others may trust to chance ; he places his 
faith in thorough preparation. No super- 
ficial judgment for him. To judge means to 



COMMANDER-IN-CHIEF 87 

General Joffre to learn ; and to learn means 
to know. 

When sent on a special mission a few years 
ago, for the purpose of studying Russia's 
military organization, he pursued his in- 
quiries in such a methodical way, with so 
much care for detail, with such practical 
intelligence and breadth of view, as to win 
warm admiration on the part of the Russian 
military authorities. 

*' What I like about your G^neralissime *' 
— declared Tsar Nicholas to M. Delcass6, then 
French Ambassador at Petrograd — '' is that 
he speaks little and prefers not to speak when 
he has nothing to say." 

What France Ukes about her leader is that 
he prefers actions to words, and that in him 
lives not only the hope of the nation, but its 
most ardent desire — victory ! 

General Joffre in^the eyes of France is the 
centrifugal force that drives all her powers 
towards a victorious end. 

*' This is nothing,'* he said on being con- 
gratulated on having been decorated with the 
military medal, '' this is nothing. Every- 
thing is nothing save victory. The only thing 
that counts is the final success." 

And for four years he devoted every 
nerve, every thought, every ounce of his 



88 LIFE OF GENERAL JOFFRE 

ability and of his strength to this final 
success. 

Sparing of words, General Joffre has not 
written either. He has been too busy pre- 
paring himself , though probably unconsciously, 
for the final test. He had to learn, he had no 
time to expound theories. 

To measure the grandeur of his conception 
and the reach of his vision there is nothing to 
be had only the results he achieved. But 
there is published a speech he deUvered in 
1913 before the Society of former pupils of 
the Polytechnic, and, in view of the events 
that have come to pass since, it is interesting 
to recall some of the passages. 

He did not give his views on strategy in 
war ; he did not explain his ideas upon the 
conduct of battles ; but he talked of the 
new conditions in which modem conflicts 
must be brought to an issue, and he announced 
what has since become nearly a truism, that 
war to-day means a war of nations, and not 
of quarrelling princes, and that, consequently, 
the responsibility for defeat would henceforth 
fall upon the nation itself. 

It was not only a soldierly discourse, it was 
one that showed to what scholarly attain- 
ments the General has reached in the course 
of his busy hfe. He cited Ovid, Bossuet, 



COMMANDER-IN-CHIEF 89 

Montesquieu. He gave a brilliant outline of 
France's colonial policy. He passed in re- 
view all the factors that are of importance 
to the defence of national honour, factors 
material, intellectual, and moral ; the army, 
the armament, the generals, and the patriotic 
valour of France. He gave tne keynote of 
his work as the head of the French Army, 
and this keynote was contained in the words 
— '' We must be prepared ! '^ 

*' With the means of fighting the world 
possesses at present '' — he declared — '' with 
whole nations engaged in a mortal combat, 
disaster is certain for those who in time of 
peace failed to prepare for war.*' 

What means '' being ready '' in these days 
of advanced military science ? General Joffre 
gives a ready reply, 

'* To be ready in our times has a significance 
of which those who prepared and led the wars 
of other days could have hardly had a com- 
prehension " — he said — '* To be ready means 
to-day to have mustered, in advance, all the 
resources of the country, all the intelHgence 
of its children, all their moral energy for the 
purpose of attaining but this one aim — 
victory. 

'' Getting ready is a duty that devolves not 
only upon the army, but upon all public 



90 LIFE OF GENERAL JOFFRE 

officials, upon all organizations, upon all 
societies, upon all families, upon all citizens. 
Each and all must take part in preparing the 
national defence. No individual or collective 
act is without importance. This defence 
grows stronger through the invention of a 
genius as much as through the efforts of a 
simple labourer, and every failure to co- 
operate makes it weaker in the same ratio. 

'* The strength, the power, the security of a 
country are interwoven with its prosperity 
and with that of its children.'' 

And once again he sounded the solemn 
warning : '' We must be ready ! '' 

Having uttered this warning he set himself 
with redoubled efforts towards making France 
ready to face the ever threatening foe. 



CHAPTER XV 
PREPARING FOR WAR 

GENERAL JOFFRE is conscious of 
realities. Others may dream of 
fundamental changes ; but he has 
ever feared experiments when the stakes 
meant national honour. He went ahead in 
perfecting the fighting machine of France ; 
but in organizing, the army, he has ever 
endeavoured to organize the nation at the 
same time for, warrior though he has been 
all his life, no one knows better the value of 
spiritual ascendency. 

'' The material organization of the army, 
perfect though it may be ; its understanding 
no matter how highly developed, will be 
insufficient to ensure us a victory, if this army, 
strong and intelligent as it may have become, 
will lack a soul,*' he declared. 

He knew then, as he knows to-day, that 
it is the soul of a people that guides the 
world^s destinies, and who will gainsay that 
he has not helped to awaken France's soul ? 

Only a comparatively short time before the 
91 



92 LIFE OF GENERAL JOFFRE 

war he delivered the other great speech of his 
hfe when he fought before the Chamber of 
Deputies for the so-called '' Three Years 
Law/' the Bill that was to extend the time 
of mihtary service to three years. 

Together with General Pau he was chosen 
by the Government to aid the passage of 
this Law, and for days he listened calm and 
unperturbed, to abuse and calumnies heaped 
by the Radicals upon the men at the head 
of France's military affairs. For three long 
months, day in and day out, he heard his 
work belittled, he witnessed the fury of vitu- 
peration trying to drag his associates into the 
mire. He faced this all as stolidly as he faced 
the dangers on his march on Timbuktu or 
the difficulties of the problems he encountered 
in his work. 

Finally a day came when General Pau, 
unable to contain his anger and not permitted 
to answer to the calumnies, rose from his seat 
and left the Chamber amidst the angry shouts 
of the opponents of the Bill, who saw in 
his action a demonstrative protest against 
parliamentarism. General J off re remained 
seated. 

Not a word escaped his tightly shut mouth, 
not a gesture came to break his impassive 
attitude, only the fire in the eyes beneath the 



PREPARING FOR WAR 93 

heavy eyebrows betrayed the emotion he 
felt. 

When he came to speak he spoke with the 
cool reasoning of an instructor, and he won 
the day, for the Bill became law. 

It would really seem as if some of these 
stoical qualities of General Joffre have passed 
into the souls of the soldiers he commands, 
for the ''furia Francese," as the Italians 
styled the bravado of the French troops of 
former days, has developed into a heroism 
that lacks the picturesque, but does not re- 
cognize obstacles nor permit anything to 
obscure the path to the goal. 

*'The primordial virtue of a general com- 
manding an army is his character,'' was 
Napoleon's dictum* 

General Joffre is a man of character, and 
this force of his has been felt throughout the 
ranks of the French Army until every soldier 
in the trenches, every trooper in the field 
owns as part and parcel of his moral equip- 
ment some of this precious gift. 

He is the idol of the army, and he has be- 
come such in spite of his being one of the 
strictest disciplinarians ever known. 

'' It is not because he spoils us that we call 
him ' our Joffre,' " said a soldier who has fought 
with him from the first moment of the war. 



94 LIFE OF GENERAL JOFFRE 

''It is because he belongs to us, because he 
is always near us, because he is what we want 
him to be, because after having read an order 
of his, no matter how great a restriction it 
may bring, one is bound to exclaim : * By 
Jove ! he is right after all ! ^ '' 

If one were to make a minute search for the 
dominant trait of his character, the discovery 
would probably be made that it consists in 
the perfect mental equilibrium he possesses. 
Born a Catholic, a Republican of firm per- 
suasion, a freemason of wide repute, creeds 
and opinions have never succeeded in making 
him give or receive favours. Many are the 
heads that fell into the official basket under 
the blow of J off re's axe, whose possessors 
ardently shared his political beliefs, and the 
claims of friendship have never yet been 
placed by him before what he conceived to be 
the interests of his country. 

Nothing is more foreign to his character 
than presumption. He is eager for opinions, 
he listens to advice, and no decision of his 
is irrevocable. He believes in the ancient 
adage : *' Errare humanum est,'' and he 
leaves to the Germans the doubtful right of 
claiming the quaUties of supermen. 

He does not lack faith in himself, but 
neither does he suffer from over-confidence. 



PREPARING FOR WAR 95 

All his life has been spent in learning, and he 
is still willing and eager to learn. 

"A well balanced mind, a well balanced 
soul/' is the verdict pronounced upon Joffre 
by one of France's most eminent thinkers. 

There is but one characteristic which is 
perhaps excessively evident. It is his taci- 
turnity ; but even this is due partly to his 
capacity of immense concentration upon his 
work and partly to his innate modesty, 
and this modesty is also probably the ex- 
planation and the cause of his apparent 
coldness, so httle in accord with the spirit 
of his native province. 

But the poverty of spoken words does not 
denote the absence of thought, any more than 
his equilibrium results from an insufficiency 
of ardour in a conflict. 

Tenacious of purpose ; daring when auda- 
city seems to be a necessity ; defiant because 
certain of himself and his men, and withal 
almost timid. This is General Joffre. He 
has never suffered from jealousy, and so he 
has never tried to diminish great quaHties in 
others. He is surrounded by men of great 
ability, and he has never been guilty of an 
endeavour to overshadow them, and if he does 
overshadow them nevertheless, it is only 
because he is the great man. 



CHAPTER XVI 
-JOFFRE, THE TACITURN" 

FUTURE military critics will discuss 
and decide the question whether or 
not France was ready to meet the 
foe when Berlin threw down the gauntlet into 
the world's arena ; future investigators will 
place the fault upon the shoulders of those 
who were responsible for any lack of readi- 
ness ; but all will have to admit that, within 
the limited powers of man, General Joffre 
performed true miracles with the material he 
had in hand. 

'' The battle is before and everything else a 
conflict of moral forces/' was a dictum of 
Napoleon, and Joffre seems to have been able 
to make out of this phrase a living emblem, 
a source of inspiration and endurance, an 
indestructible armament for his men. 

It was their superior moral force that en- 
abled the French armies to hold back, and 
then to hurl back, the much greater and 
stronger armies of the Kaiser. It was moral 

force that made the French soldier overcome 

96 



'' JOFFRE, THE TACITURN " 97 

and laugh at insurmountable difficulties. It 
was moral force that welded the French 
nation into one compound mass of energy and 
patriotism. 

The very exterior of General Joffre be- 
speaks the man. He is of rather large 
stature. His wide chest is surmounted by 
a large head. The face is broad, and the 
heavy eyebrows serve to accentuate its 
character. A strong jaw, beneath a heavy 
moustache, does not add to the mobility of 
the features. Strength is the chief charac- 
teristic of his face, and only the eyes, blue, 
brilliant, clear with a penetrating gaze and an 
expression which is more soft than severe, 
reflect the soul of purity and the heart of gold 
of the General. 

To see him placid and calm, well planted 
on his legs, emanating assurance, one begins 
to understand why '' Papa Joffre *' has 
come to be a favourite nickname with 
soldiers. 

There is something paternal in his figure, 
in his pose, in his glance. There is some- 
thing paternal in the impression one receives 
from looking at his face, the face of a man 
both happy and healthy, for neither illness, 
nor ambition, nor passion, nor anger have 
left their imprint there. One begins to 



98 LIFE OF GENERAL JOFFRE 

understand why the soldiers look to Joffre 
as the little boy does to his father. 

Patience is the foundation of the General's 
will-power, its moving force is his conscience, 
which makes him disregard the world's 
vanities, which makes him place duty above 
everything else, which makes him seek re- 
ward in the performance of the task and not 
in the honours that may be heaped upon 
him. Add to this the free use of common 
sense, and it is easily seen why he has never 
sought to astonish, why he has ever been the 
watchful, the careful, the humane leader of 
men. 

Truly it may be said that he is a com- 
mander who knows no hatred, no passionate 
anger, and who is thus free from self-reproach. 

Many were the visits to his headquarters 
described by eager and enthusiastic scribes. 
Pages of eulogy were written about him and 
his achievements. As yet no one has suc- 
ceeded in obtaining an interview from him — 
for he hates to make himself the centre of 
public attention and he abhors publicity. 

He spoke and he will speak in that serious 
voice of his, in that slow manner of his, every 
word seemingly carefully weighed before 
being pronounced, every phrase simple, clear, 
and void of any attempt at oratory ; but 



" JOFFRE, THE TACITURN '' 99 

search as one may, the personal element, 
that really makes an interview, is ever 
absent. 

Whenever he uttered anything it was for 
the single purpose of emphasizing anew the 
fact that victory when it comes will belong 
to the whole French nation ; whenever he 
spoke, he declared that success was due to 
the undaunted spirit of the French soldier. 
As to himself, he looks upon himself as only 
the lever that puts in motion a machinery, 
every cog of which must be in perfect co- 
ordination if good results are to be achieved. 

Call it modesty, call it unresponsiveness to 
popular clamour, the fact remains that when 
'' Joffre, the Taciturn '' breaks his silence, it 
is never to waste words in self-praise, and 
France loves him the better for it. 



CHAPTER XVII 
AT JOFFRE'S HEADQUARTERS 

CIRCUMSTANCES bring with them the 
man. Joffre, in the days of pic- 
turesque, theatrical warfare, would 
have been probably out of place ; but in 
these days, when the automobile has replaced 
the galloping horse, when the sword is left to 
rust in some corner, when the golden epaulets 
and the tinsel of other days have disappeared 
together with comic opera uniforms, white 
capes and bearskin busbies, Joffre is rightly 
the genius incarnate of the army he com- 
mands. 

A modern army chief resembles much more 
the directing head of a giant industry than the 
battlefield general of our imagination. General 
Joffre is a great leader because warfare has 
developed into a struggle of brains, plus 
engineering skill, plus organizing ability. 

At the great battle of Borodino Napoleon 
could easily survey the whole front from a 
neighbouring hill. Nearly a million men were 
engaged in that memorable battle beneath the 

100 



AT JOFFRE'S HEADQUARTERS lol 

very walls of Moscow, and still the battle-front 
was well within the horizon of a human eye. 
Napoleon could ride from one wing to the 
other, encouraging and directing, changing 
plans and making new adjustments. 

Seated in a Httle room, surrounded with 
maps. General J off re must think out all his 
plans to the minutest detail, probably days in 
advance of the actual struggle, for when the 
latter comes, there is no room and no time 
for changes. 

Inspiration at the last moment saved many 
a day for Napoleon. Such inspiration to-day 
could not prevent disaster, it would probably 
but hasten it. J off re places his faith in 
other things than inspiration at the eleventh 
hour. He knows beforehand what is going to 
happen, and takes his measures to ensure 
success. 

Time will show the difficulties General 
Joffre had to overcome, for brains alone 
cannot win wars. Cannons and soldiers, 
horses and ammunitions are more than 
essential. Despite Joffre's repeated warnings, 
France was not ready when Germany's 
cohorts began their march through Belgium. 
History will name the guilty, as history 
will crown Joffre a true miracle worker. 

Should the impossible happen and defeat 



102 LIFE OF GENERAL JOFFRE 

crush the French Army, future generations 
would have to admit that, whoever's fault 
caused the disaster, General Joffre was 
blameless. 

Were you fortunate enough to have been 
admitted to General Joffre's presence at his 
army headquarters, you would have probably 
found him in a small room, surrounded by 
telephones and maps. The constant sound 
of rushing motor-cars ; the ceaseless coming 
and going of staff-officers ; the arrival and 
dispatch of telegrams ; the hearing of reports, 
frequently contradictory in the extreme, 
form the atmosphere that surrounds him. 

He alone would not appear to you to be 
hurried as he issued orders or dictated in- 
structions — hurry would be a sign of inde- 
cision, and General Joffre never gives an 
order before his decision has been fully 
made. 

Some day these orders of General Joffre 
will be issued in book form for the guidance 
of generals of generations to come. 

He orders what aim is to be pursued, he 
leaves the choice of means to the immediate 
commanders of the divisions or brigades. 
He never stifles initiative, he never tries to 
prevent any one from having an opportunity 
of winning the laurel wreath of victory. An 



AT JOFFRE^S HEADQUARTERS 103 

impartial judge, he is as ready with reward 
as with punishment ; but he exacts quick 
brains and firm hands from those who would 
serve under him. 

At midnight you would find him working 
still, as you would probably find him two 
hours later. Then you would see him throw 
himself upon the narrow iron cot, boots and 
all, and when the morning sun would come 
out from below the horizon to signal the 
coming of another day, it would discover the 
General already at his work. 

A silent man, if you please, but has there 
ever been an eloquence so powerful as his 
silence ? 

A loving husband, a tender father. General 
J off re has kept away from his family from 
the moment the first shot was fired in this 
war. He did so because he ordered that no 
woman must come near his soldiers' camps, 
and he would have been untrue to himself 
had he not set the first example. 

" He has ever set the example, and he has 
never shirked his duty,'' would be a fair 
summary of the reasons why he has become 
*' Our J off re " from the moment he has 
assumed the high command of the French 
Army, 

Kings have paid their homage to him. 



104 LIFE OF GENERAL JOFFRE 

nations have glorified him, great soldiers have 
bowed before his leadership, but he has re- 
mained the simple man, the son of an honest 
Pyrenean, and when the war will be over, he 
will probably hasten to his native Rivesaltes 
and forget the hardships of the war over a 
game of manille, while the world will still 
sing his praises and repeat Lord Kitchener's 
w^ords : '* He is a great man/' 

No biographical sketch of General J off re 
would be complete without a few words 
about his home life. 

In days of peace General Joffre is the man 
of the home in the truest sense of the word. 
It is but seldom that he leaves his fireside 
once the day's labours are over, and the 
Roman adage *' Mens sana in corpore sano " 
has never had a more ardent disciple than 
him. 

Early to bed and early to rise has been his 
iron rule when at home. Of an evening he 
loves to listen to his wife playing his favourite 
melodies on the piano ; he plays and chats 
with his two little daughters ; he sings some- 
times, for he knows the classic repertoire 
and he appreciates good music ; sometimes 
a friend comes in for a talk ; but not a day 
passes on which before retiring for the night 
he does not spend some time in his magnifi- 



AT JOFFRE'S HEADQUARTERS 105 

cent library, for he is a true lover of books 
and a never tiring seeker after knowledge. 

Every morning at six o'clock he can be seen 
riding a horse in the Bois de Boulogne. 
Sometimes he is alone ; sometimes his little 
daughters accompany him. Seldom have 
Parisians recognized him in the past, and he 
has never sought their recognition. 

General Joffre's simplicity of manner is fully 
equalled by the simplicity of his home life, 
for the glamour of society has never attracted 
him and the pleasures of the masses stir no 
emotion within him. 

A life full of busy interest, of active work, 
of serious intention and of patriotic devotion ; 
a man of honest purpose, of constant pursuit, 
of unfaiHng energy, of deep thought and of 
great learning ; a leader of sterHng qualities, 
a general of genius, a soldier without fear or 
reproach — this is General J off re, his life and 
himself. 

One hundred years have passed from 
Napoleon till Joffre. A century separates 
these two men. Both mark the culminating- 
points of France's glory. But one conquered 
to bring ruin to his country ; the other will 
conquer to prevent ruin from ever menacing 
his country again. 



CHAPTER XVIII 
SOME ANECDOTES 

IT will have been gathered from the fore- 
going chapters that General Joffre, like 
our own Lord Roberts, did not under- 
stand the art of self-advertisement. He had, 
indeed, a perfect horror of publicity. Some 
time after he was entrusted with special 
missions to Senegal and Timbuktu, he wrote 
an account of the expeditions without once 
mentioning himself. 

Of his private life so little is known that a 
French lady, who recently delivered a lecture 
on the GeneraUs career, had to confess that 
she did not know the maiden name of Madame 
Joffre. There is, indeed, no hostess in Paris 
who can boast that she ever entertained the 
General. He never wished to pose as a social 
lion. From such small and unpretentious 
functions as he would allow himself to attend, 
he always departed early, so that he might 
be fresh for the next day's duties. 

His exercise was limited to a morning ride 
in the Bois, and a three-mile walk from his 

io6 



SOME ANECDOTES 107 

ofj&ce to his home. He has always been 
extremely abstemious in his habits, smoking 
Uttle and drinking less. As a conversa- 
tionalist he is awkward and abrupt, not 
because he has nothing to say, but from a 
sheer disinclination to seem to be thrusting 
himself forward. 

Of such a man anecdotes are necessarily 
rare, but one or two stories are told which 
illustrate, to some extent, the reticence of 
the man, and the comparative obscurity 
from which the war has drawn him. 

After the war of 1870 he was entrusted to 
organize the new defences of Paris, and it 
was on his plans, and under his direction, that 
the fortifications at Enghien were erected. It 
was on the ramparts of one of these forts that 
Marshal MacMahon, surrounded by his staff, 
called a young lieutenant, who had not spoken 
a word, and said to him, '' I congratulate you, 
captain ! '' '* Captain at tv/enty years ! That 
is good.'' To congratulate the young officer 
thus openly and personally was not strict 
miUtary etiquette. '' How could I help it ? '* 
said the Marshal afterwards. *' My heart 
went out to the young fellow.'' 

Joffre was sent East to organize the de- 
fensive works of Pontarlier. ''It is all very 
nice," he said to a friend, *' but I know more 



io8 LIFE OF GENERAL JOFFRE 

than making fortifications. I should wish to 
be given the command of troops/' 

Dr. Pujade, ex-deputy of the Pyr^n^es- 
Orientales, relates how he was at Dresden 
in 1911 at the time of the incident at Agadir. 
'' The Parliamentary delegates of which I was 
one/* he said, '' had been officially invited to 
a grand dinner by the mayor of the Saxon 
capital. The gravity of the international 
position naturally checked the flow of genial 
conversation, and during the dinner conversa- 
tion was strictly formal. 

'' Towards the close, however, the German 
tongues were unloosed. In the smoking- 
room the President of the Exhibition of 
Hygiene of Dresden, who thought, no doubt, 
that I might be more talkative than my 
colleague, said bluntly, ' What do you think 
of the situation in France ' ? 

'' I did not reply, and he repeated the 
question. I still kept silent. The German 
then became angry. ' Yes,' he said, ' I 
know well that a French soldier is worth two 
German soldiers, but you have neither disci- 
pKne nor generals.' ' We have no discipline,' 
I replied. ' You are right. We have not 
your discipHne. We have replaced it by the 
love of the officers for their soldiers, and by 
the love of the soldiers for their officers, 



SOME ANECDOTES 109 

thanks to which our officers would be able 
to make their soldiers pass through the eye 
of a needle. We have no generals ? All 
right ! And you ? Who have you ? And 
what proofs have they given ? As a matter 
of fact, of all our French generals I only 
know one, but I know him well. That 
is the Commander-in-Chief, General J off re. 
I advise you not to meddle with him.' '' 

Of the Generars strictly methodical habits 
the following story is told. 

During the retreat from Mons a staff officer 
arrived at headquarters with a very urgent 
dispatch after the Commander-in-Chief had 
retired for the night. Joffre had given in- 
structions that he was not to be disturbed 
before 5 A.M., and that directions would be 
found for any emergency in certain marked 
envelopes. These were opened and the 
solution found for the difficulty that had 
arisen, which he had foreseen and prepared 
for. 

There was some discontent in France at 
General Joffre's order that no wives or sweet- 
hearts were to be allowed to visit men on 
active service. *' Women have nothing to 
do with the Army," he said, '* I fear them 
as much as I fear intoxicating Uquor.'* 
But he imposed the same stern sacrifice 



no LIFE OF GENERAL JOFFRE 

on himself. During the first five months 
of the war, Mme. Joffre never saw her hus- 
band, and even now she only obtains 
a glimpse of him on his rare and brief visits 
to Paris. 



GENERAL JOFFRE'S FAMOUS ORDER 
ISSUED ON September 6, 1914 

Soldiers, 

At the moment when a battle, on which 
the salvation of your country may depend, 
is about to begin, you must remember that 
this is not the time for retrospective glances, 
for all the efforts must be employed to attack. 
An army that cannot advance must, no 
matter what the cost, maintain the territory 
won and die rather than retreat. 

Signed : Joffre 



III 



SPEECH OF PRESIDENT P0INCAR6 
WHEN PRESENTING GENERAL 
JOFFRE WITH THE MILITARY 
MEDAL 

My dear General, 

I have great pleasure in presenting you 
to-day in the presence of the Presidents of the 
Chamber, the President of the Council, and the 
Secretary of War, with this simple and 
glorious medal which is the emblem of the 
highest military achievement, and which is 
proudly worn by illustrious generals and 
modest soldiers ahke. 

This symbolic distinction is but a proof of 
the nation's gratitude. 

Since the day, when, under your direction, 
the concentration of the French forces was so 
remarkably executed, you have shown in the 
command of our armies qualities which cannot 
be denied : a spirit of organization, of order, 
and of method the beneficial effects of which 
are felt in the strategy as well as in the 
tactics ; a cool and discreet wisdom, which 
always knows how to meet the unexpected ; 

112 



SPEECH OF PRESIDENT POINCARE 113 

a force of soul that nothing disturbs ; 
a serenity, the salutary example of which 
spreads everywhere confidence and hope. 

It will meet, I am sure, with your sincerest 
wishes, if I include in my congratulations to you 
your faithful co-workers of the general staff , who 
arrange the plan of operations, and who, like 
you, are wholly absorbed in their sacred task. 

During the terrible weeks you have passed 
through you have increased the effect of the 
brilliant victory of the Marne by the no less 
brilHant defence of Flanders, and thanks to 
the inspiration which those around you find 
in you, everything points to new successes, 
for there is perfect unity of view in the high 
command, an active co-operation between the 
allied armies, and brilUant tactics and a wise 
co-ordination of the different branches of the 
service. As the result the Standards of the 
Allies have but one heart and one spirit, and 
individuals wilHngly sacrifice their Uves when 
the general welfare is at stake. 

Midst this sublime devotion of a free people, 
the representatives of the land have not been 
the least eager to pay their debt to their 
country, and the high officials, who are here 
to-day to offer to the Army the ardent wishes 
of the two Houses of ParUament, will permit 
me to join with them in expressing my emotion 

H 



114 LIFE OF GENERAL JOFFRE 

at the recollection of the members of Parliament 
who fell, dead or wounded, on the battlefield. 

The sorrows and the horrors of this 
dreadful war will not diminish the enthusiasm 
of our troops ; the terrible losses sustained 
by the nation will not affect its constancy 
nor its determination. France has em- 
ployed every means to save mankind from a 
catastrophe without precedent ; she knows 
that, if a repetition of it is to be avoided, 
she has, together with her AUies, to destroy 
its causes ; she knows that the present 
generation bears the responsibihty for the 
future ; she knows that, unless we disavow 
all our history, we have not the right to 
repudiate our centuries-old mission of civihza- 
tion and liberty. 

An indecisive victory and a precarious 
peace will expose, on the morrow, French 
genius to new insults of that refined barbarism 
which assumes a mask of science the better 
to gratify its domineering instincts. France 
will pursue to the end, thanks to the un- 
breakable union of all her children and to 
the help of her Allies, the work of Hberating 
Europe, and when success will crown our efforts 
she will find, under the auspices of her dead, a 
life a great deal more intense in its glory, in 
its unity, in its security. 



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LONDON 6- EDINBURGH 



